China Mobile Communication Group Device Co., Ltd. (CMDC) and Chinese OEMs including Xiaomi, OnePlus, OPPO, Vivo and ZTE, are developing 5G mobile devices featuring the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Mobile Platform using the Snapdragon X50 5G NR modem family.

Just launched this week at the annual Qualcomm Snapdragon Technology Summit, the Snapdragon 855 Mobile Platform is the first commercial mobile platform supporting multi-gigabit 5G, AI and immersive extended reality (XR) collectively. At the China Mobile Global Partner Conference in Guangzhou, Qualcomm Technologies and Chinese OEMs jointly showcased 5G mobile demo devices, including smartphones and a customer premise equipment (CPE).

Xiaomi participates to the ‘5G Pioneer’ Initiative of Qualcomm Technologies and plans to releases a 5G smartphone next year. The company showcased a 5G version of Mi MIX 3, poewred by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 and X50 5G modem, with a maximum download speed of up to 2Gbps. Xiaomi also demonstrated Web surfing and live video streaming using the 5G network. The company will launch the 5G version of Mi MIX 3 in Europe, and then launch commercial smartphones supporting China Mobile’s 5G network in the third quarter of 2019.

OnePlus also plans a 5G device next year. OnePlus CEO Pete Lau said he would do his best to make sure the company's first 5G phone available to customers for under $1,000 -- less than the price of a standard, 2018 flagship smartphone. The company has also partnered with UK carrier EE to launch the first 5G phone in Europe next year.

Vivo plans to launch its first 5G pre-commercial smartphone in 2019, and achieve the large scale commercial rollouts of 5G smartphones by 2020. ZTE says it is looking forward to introducing commercial 5G smartphones in the first half of 2019.

In related news, China has issued licenses to the country's big three telecom carriers, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, to use low-and medium-band spectrum for nationwide 5G trial network construction, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said on Thursday.