ZTE Corp announced that its 5G smartphone has been available for orders in China since July 23 as the Chinese smartphone maker races to gain a foothold in the increasingly competitive 5G smartphone market. It is the country’s first 5G phone model to have its price announced and to have entered the pre-sale phase. The ZTE Axon 10 Pro 5G is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 mobile platform and a 4000 mAh capacity battery with wireless charging support. The handset comes equipped with a 6.47-inch AMOLED display with a waterdrop notch. It also features a triple camera setup which includes a 48-megapixel main sensor, an ultra-wide 20-megapixel lens and a 8-megapixel telephoto lens. The handset will be put on sale through ZTE’s official online store as well as e-commerce platforms including JD, TMall.com and Suning.com for CNY4,999. The pre-sale announcement comes a week after the first batch of eight 5G phone models obtained the quality certificate needed to hit the market. “We believe sales of 5G smartphones in China can only take up 1% to 2% of the whole market this year. We don’t expect large sales of ZTE’s 5G smartphone this year – probably hundreds of thousands of units. But the launch is a boost to the company’s brand,” said James Yan, Research Director at Counterpoint Technology Market Research.

Huawei presented its 5G smartphone, the Mate 20X 5G, on July 26. Powered by a Kirin 980 processor with the 7-nanometer Balong 5000 5G multi-mode chipset, the phone, priced at CNY6,199, is the only mobile phone in the world that supports both stand-alone (SA) and non-stand-alone (NSA) 5G networks, as well as the earlier 4G, 3G and 2G standards. The phone will be on sale on August 16. The price is much lower than the CNY10,000 analysts expected. “At the present time, all smartphone vendors except Huawei have to rely on chipsets from other companies. This may place Huawei at an advantageous position in the 5G market,” said Roger Sheng, VP Analyst at consultancy Gartner. In July, Monaco became the first country in Europe to set up a 5G mobile phone network, using Huawei technology.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is worrying that it is lagging behind China in the 5G race, and the sanctions placed on Huawei are not helping it to catch up. The technology promises to revolutionize everything from the “internet of things” (IoT) to autonomous driving, smart cities and virtual reality (VR), with billions of dollars of economic benefit set to accrue to countries able to keep up with it. The U.S. Defense Innovation Board issued a preliminary report on 5G’s risks and opportunities for the Pentagon, finding that if current trends were maintained, “5G has the potential to skew future networks even further in the direction of China if it continues to lead”.

“From a marketshare perspective, Huawei is leading as No 1. In the 5G space, the U.S. is a leader in many facets of the ecosystem – with the main caveat that there is no U.S. company making radio access networking equipment,” said Mark Hung, Vice President of Technology and Engineering at industry trade group Wi-fi Alliance in Santa Clara, California. “There is no U.S. company that could imminently do something similar to Huawei, Ericsson or Nokia outside of an acquisition of an existing player,” he added.