Ericsson CEO Börje Ekholm believes the next three years will be “critical in determining the 5G landscape,” but cautioned that seeking out a killer app for 5G at this stage is an exercise in futility. 

“By the time we identify the killer app, it will actually be too late,” he said during a presentation for the 2020 GTI Summit.

“Many looked for the killer app in 4G, however we were not able to envisage a world where a ride-hailing app would be the normal way of ordering transportation,” he said, adding that shopping and watching movies on mobile devices was also hard to imagine when 4G LTE development was underway.

This common refrain, oft repeated by infrastructure vendors, operators, and service providers is nebulous. Mobile operators invested heavily in mobile entertainment and television offerings during the 3G era, and person-to-person economic activity predates cellular technology entirely.

Nonetheless, these examples are routinely claimed as the most well regarded standout apps delivered by 4G LTE connectivity. It also reinforces the general build-it-and-they-will-come mindset shared by many companies that have a financial interest in technology upgrade cycles.

“All of these became seized upon in the 4G ecosystem, so early adopters of 4G in China actually came to dominate the world of the app economy because the app economy leveraged the platform of innovation that 4G provided, and we believe 5G will be the same thing,” Ekholm said.

“We will not be able to define a killer app for 5G,” he argued. “The killer app will be clear once the infrastructure has been built out. Then entrepreneurs and innovators will come with new applications on top of the 5G platform, and that will create multiples of value compared to the infrastructure itself.”

Ericsson’s 5G equipment is currently operating in more than 40 countries around the world and it is already the “fastest scaling wireless technology ever,” Ekholm said. The Swedish vendor recently raised its prediction for global 5G subscriptions from 2.6 billion to 2.8 billion by 2025, adding that some previously unforeseen gains will occur before the end of 2020.

It also forecasts fixed wireless access connections will reach nearly 160 million by the end of 2025, capturing about 25% of total data traffic in the network, Ekholm said.

Massive opportunities are also expected in the enterprise, he added. “We estimate that industry digitalization will generate an estimated $700 billion of addressable market opportunity for the service providers by 2030, and this corresponds with about 35% of current industry revenues so the opportunity is big.”

As such, Ekholm encouraged service providers to expand beyond traditional mobile network services and said “the evolution of cellular IoT and private networks are crucial in establishing momentum for 5G-enabled businesses.”