China is getting an early lead in the race to 5G, according to new data from research firm M Science: Chinese carriers are selling almost 17 times the number of 5G phones that US carriers did from the week ending Nov. 2 to the week ending Dec. 7.

M Science creates actionable intelligence, based on alternative data, for corporations and investors to use in business decision-making. They studied the sales of 4G and 5G phones in the US and China, week upon week. While US carriers launched 5G services and began to sell phones months before Chinese carriers did, Chinese phone sales really took off the week of Nov. 9, the research firm says, with carriers selling more than 100,000 5G-capable phones every week since. US carriers haven't sold more than 15,000 5G phones per week since September.

The 5G outlook in the US and China is very different right now, largely because of the difference between a country where carriers are competing using different technologies and a highly standardized market where carriers coordinate (respectively).

Here in the US, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile have all launched limited 5G service, which we've been tracking on our Race to 5G page. The diverse systems use a small number of expensive, incompatible devices, which also promise to be incompatible with at least some of the carriers' 2020 upgrades.

The three major Chinese carriers launched 5G in a much more coordinated way in November, launching service in 50 cities and now offering more than 20 5G-capable handsets. China's system uses 3.5Ghz spectrum, which offers a more consistent balance of speed and coverage than the approaches AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon are currently using in the US.

Of the devices sold in the US, most are Samsung phones, while Huawei dominates 5G sales in China, M Science says.

According to an article on Sixth Tone, a Web site about China, 5G phone purchases there will likely boom in late January, when Huawei launches 5G versions of its popular P-series handsets. Here in the US, the first phone that will likely be able to handle all of our carriers' 5G approaches will be the Samsung Galaxy S11, which is coming out in February.

This is a marathon, not a sprint, though. In both countries, only a tiny percentage of phones sold are 5G. For the week of Dec. 7, a mere 1.86 percent of US phones and 3.42 percent of Chinese phones sold support 5G, M Science reports. In the US, we anticipate those numbers will really take off only when Apple releases its 5G iPhone in September 2020, a product that Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon told us his company is hustling to make possible.

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