Cloud gaming streaming to highlight 5G services in 2020, says Digitimes Research

Benson Wu, DIGITIMES Research, Taipei

More mobile operators worldwide are enhancing their deployments in the cloud gaming streaming market to highlight the differentiated value that 5G networks will bring forth.

Telecom operators in Korea pioneered commercial 5G mobile network services in April 2019, and as a whole they had secured nearly 3.5 million subscribers as of the third quarter of the year and also saw the average data traffic of 5G subscribers increase exponentially as compared to 4G ones. Although ARPU (average revenues per user) of Korea's telecom operators has bottomed out since the first quarter of 2019, their revenues per unit data traffic have kept declining year-on-year.

This shows that the business model relying on data traffic in 4G may no longer be vaiable in the 5G era due to factors including rising market competition and network maintenance costs. Digitimes Research believes that the value of 5G services will wane rapidly if mobile operators fail to roll out differentiated applications in the next-generation communication environment.

From the perspective of mobile operators, the cloud gaming streaming market is likely to become the best application to highlight the differentiated value of 5G networks. As a result, many first-tier operators in respective markets have teamed up with Nvidia's Geforce Now, Microsoft's xCloud, Tencent's Start, and Ubitus in Taiwan for rolling out cloud gaming streaming services, making them a bright spot for 5G applications in 2020.