Inside the 5G-Advanced Patent Landscape: The Race That Will Determine Who Controls 6G

Of the 36,166 Change Requests submitted to 3GPP for 5G-Advanced, 45.6% are concentrated in the technologies most critical to 6G. Yet only 21.9% of declared SEP families cover these same technologies.

The commercial consequences of this gap are already visible. Ericsson’s patent licensing program generated approximately $880 million in 2023, a figure the company has publicly stated it expects to grow through the 5G-Advanced cycle. InterDigital’s licensing revenue reached $604 million the same year, driven by a portfolio concentrated in vertical technology areas where 5G-Advanced is creating new licensing exposure for industries outside traditional telecom. 

Active disputes over 5G SEP royalty terms, including litigation involving Huawei, Nokia, OPPO, and a growing list of automotive manufacturers, signal how contested the landscape will become as 5G-Advanced deployments scale.

What determines who wins is not total patent volume. It is where IP is concentrated, how actively organizations are converting standards contributions into declared SEP families, and whether their portfolios sit in the technology areas where licensing leverage will be highest when the gap closes.

This analysis focuses on three strategic pillars structuring 5G-Advanced IP activity: 

• The corporate strategies of the organizations competing to own their licensing future
• The enabling technologies within 
• The market forces accelerating their commercialization

Three Strategic Pillars, 17,684 Patent Families: Where the 5G-Advanced Race Is Being Fought

According to the analysis of ETSI declaration records, 17,684 SEP families have been identified as relevant to 5G-Advanced technologies, representing 20.2% of the approximately 88,000 total declared 5G SEP families from Release 15 onward. 

That share is expected to grow. The majority of declared 5G-Advanced families are still in active prosecution, with only 5,242 families holding at least one alive and granted member as of 2024.

3GPP CRs vs. Declared 5G A SEP Families by Strategic Pillar

The growth trajectory makes the strategic stakes clear. Between 2021 and 2024, the total number of declared 5G-Advanced SEP families grew from 5,459 to 17,537, more than tripling in three years. This is not a mature, stable licensing landscape. It is an active one, still being built.

Mapping these 17,684 families against 36,166 Change Requests across 3GPP’s 5G-Advanced work items reveals something more analytically significant than total volume: a deliberate and measurable fragmentation of competitive strategy across three distinct technology pillars.

Pillar 1:  The Most Contested Ground Where SEPs Are Dense, and Entry Barriers Are Rising

The Performance Engine represents the most immediately deployable layer of 5G-Advanced investment.  It focuses on making existing 5G networks faster, more energy-efficient, and more reliable. Its technologies, Advanced MIMO, Network Energy Savings, Dynamic Spectrum Sharing, Sub-Band Full Duplex, Mobility Enhancement, and Multicast Broadcast Services are already in active commercial rollout across major markets.

This maturity is reflected directly in the patent data. Pillar 1 accounts for 47.6% of all declared 5G-Advanced SEP families, the highest concentration of any pillar, against 25.4% of 3GPP Change Requests. The ratio of declared SEPs to CR activity is the highest of the three pillars, meaning the IP landscape here is more settled, licensing frameworks are more established, and the cost of building a competitive position from scratch is significantly higher than in the pillars that follow.

For organizations already holding Pillar 1 positions, this is where near-term licensing revenue is most immediately accessible. For those without established positions, the window for building them at low cost has largely closed.

Advanced MIMO: The Most Actively Contested Licensing Area in 5G-Advanced Infrastructure

MIMO is a foundational technology in 5G that uses multiple antennas to send and receive more data simultaneously, improving communication efficiency. In 5G-Advanced, Advanced MIMO significantly refines beamforming and spatial multiplexing, which enhances data throughput and spectral efficiency. At the product level, this allows networks to support more users with minimal interference, especially in high-density environments like stadiums or city centers. 

As urban population densities rise and data-intensive applications (such as VR/AR) become more prevalent, Advanced MIMO ensures that network capacity and user experience remain reliable and consistent during peak periods.

China currently accounts for the largest share of Massive MIMO deployments globally, driven by aggressive 5G-Advanced rollouts by China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom. China Mobile alone has publicly committed to deploying over 300,000 5G-Advanced base stations in 2024, the majority of which incorporate advanced MIMO capabilities.

In North America, the primary demand driver is dense urban deployment. The United States has approximately 330,000 active 5G base stations as of early 2024, with Advanced MIMO upgrades representing a growing share of new capex. Verizon and AT&T have both cited MIMO enhancement as a core component of their mid-band 5G densification strategies.

An analysis of the competitive landscape shows Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, and ZTE collectively dominate the Advanced MIMO equipment market. Samsung has made notable inroads in North America and South Korea, while Ericsson and Nokia maintain strong positions in Europe. Patent concentration in this space is high, making it one of the most actively contested licensing areas across 5G-Advanced.

Advanced MIMO is the single most patent-dense technology area in Pillar 1. Entry barriers for new portfolio holders are high, and licensing negotiations with the major infrastructure vendors are already underway. For organizations assessing MIMO exposure, the priority is to understand existing cross-licensing arrangements and to determine whether their implementations read on the declared SEP families of the top five holders.

Multicast and Broadcast Services: Where Network Efficiency Patents Meet the Automotive OTA Market

In traditional networks, Standard data delivery is unicast: the network sends a separate copy of content to each individual user. This works adequately when user counts are low, but degrades rapidly at scale. 

However, Multicast/Broadcast Services (MBS) in 5G-Advanced enable the simultaneous distribution of content to multiple users (one-to-many). The most commercially immediate use case for MBS is over-the-air (OTA) software updates for connected vehicles. A typical modern vehicle OTA update package ranges from 1 to 4 GB. Delivered via unicast to 400 million connected vehicles simultaneously, this would place a catastrophic load on any network. Delivered via MBS, it becomes a single broadcast event.  

By enhancing MBS, 5G-Advanced reduces network strain and ensures efficient, scalable content delivery in applications that demand high-bandwidth, real-time communication-a key feature for both consumer and enterprise markets.

MBS essential patents benefit from a uniquely broad licensing surface; they are relevant to automotive OEMs, live media operators, and government emergency services simultaneously. Organizations holding MBS SEPs can pursue licensing conversations across three distinct industries, each with different royalty precedents and different levels of prior SEP licensing experience.

Mobility Enhancement: The Patent Layer Underpinning Connected Vehicle Safety

Mobility Enhancement addresses one of the most persistent pain points in mobile networks: the degradation in connection quality that occurs when a device moves between cell towers. In 5G-Advanced, innovations such as Dual Active Protocol Stack (DAPS) handovers and lower-layer-triggered handovers reduce both the frequency and impact of these interruptions. DAPS, in particular, maintains two simultaneous connections during the handover window, effectively eliminating the signal gap that causes dropped packets.

The clearest commercial case for Mobility Enhancement is in connected and autonomous vehicles. A vehicle traveling at highway speed passes through a cell tower boundary approximately every 1–3 minutes in urban areas. For consumer applications, this creates intermittent connectivity issues. For autonomous driving systems, which rely on continuous V2X (Vehicle-to-Everything) communication for safety-critical decisions, it creates an unacceptable reliability gap.

Beyond automotive, Mobility Enhancement is critical for connectivity on high-speed rail, a sector where speeds of 300+ km/h create extreme handover frequency. 

Mobility Enhancement patents sit at the intersection of telecom standards and automotive safety regulation, a combination that significantly strengthens their licensing leverage. As V2X communication becomes a regulatory requirement rather than an optional feature across multiple jurisdictions, the essential patents covering handover performance in high-mobility environments will be mandated for implementation in automotive and rail applications.

Network Energy Savings: Where Sustainability Mandates Are Creating a Compliance-Driven Patent Market

Energy efficiency is becoming a top priority in mobile network operations, driven by sustainability goals and the need to reduce operational expenses (OpEx). NES utilizes AI-driven algorithms to dynamically manage energy consumption based on traffic demands, allowing base stations to enter sleep modes during low-traffic periods and re-activate rapidly when needed. For product developers, this translates into a more sustainable network that lowers operating costs while maintaining high performance, helping ensure a greener future without compromising user experience.

NES is increasingly an issue of compliance rather than a discretionary investment. The EU’s European Green Deal includes specific carbon targets for the ICT sector. The GSMA has committed the mobile industry to net zero by 2050, with an interim target of 2030. South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT has introduced energy efficiency benchmarks for 5G operators. These frameworks are converting NES from an operational preference into a mandated upgrade cycle, expanding the addressable market and the licensing value of relevant patents simultaneously.

The regulatory mandates surrounding network energy efficiency are creating a compliance-driven demand layer that expands the relevance of NES patents beyond voluntary adoption. Essential patents covering AI-driven sleep-mode algorithms and dynamic power scaling, the core of 3GPP’s Release 18 NES work items, will benefit from this structural demand floor, regardless of organic operator appetite.

Sub-Band Full Duplex: The Least Saturated Patent Area in Pillar 1

Traditionally, networks used Time Division Duplexing (TDD), where either upload or download operations occur at any given time. With Sub-Band Full Duplex (SBFD), 5G-Advanced enables simultaneous uplink and downlink on the same frequency band, improving uplink performance and reducing latency. For products, this has direct implications for real-time applications like industrial automation, remote surgery, and real-time gaming, where low latency and high-speed uplink capabilities are vital for success.

Dynamic Spectrum Sharing: The Patent Battleground for Operators Trapped Between 4G and 5G

Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) is a key enabler for efficient spectrum use in 5G-Advanced. DSS allows mobile operators to share the same spectrum between 4G and 5G networks, dynamically adjusting the allocation based on real-time demand. This technology is crucial for smoother 5G rollouts since it enables operators to maximize the value of existing 4G spectrum while introducing 5G capabilities. From a product standpoint, DSS helps accelerate 5G deployment without requiring significant new spectrum allocation, ensuring faster time-to-market for 5G services.

By advancing these core technologies, 5G-Advanced is not just about improving speed and capacity; it’s about transforming how telecom networks operate and serve the data-driven needs of future industries. From supporting immersive experiences to enabling critical real-time applications, these advancements play a pivotal role in shaping the network infrastructure that will power the next generation of connected services.

5G-Advanced Ownership Report maps exactly where essential patent positions are being built, declared SEP families, CR activity, and pillar-by-pillar competitive rankings across the top 20 contributors. This is the data you need to identify white spaces, benchmark your exposure, and enter licensing negotiations before the declaration gap closes.

DSS patent holders benefit from a structural market dynamic: operators who have paid billions for spectrum licenses have a direct financial incentive to deploy DSS, and they cannot do so without implementing the underlying standard. 

This creates a captive licensing market among operators in spectrum-constrained markets, particularly Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Southern Europe, where 4G-to-5G transitions are still underway.

Pillar 1 is the most mature layer of the 5G-Advanced patent landscape. Pillars 2 and 3 are where the most consequential IP is still being established.

For a complete breakdown of which organizations hold the strongest positions across all three pillars, including SEP family counts, CR distributions, and pillar-by-pillar competitive rankings, access GreyB’s 5G-Advanced Ownership Report. 

Pillar 2: The Vertical Licensing Frontier Where Industrial Markets Are Entering the SEP Ecosystem for the First Time

Pillar 2 moves beyond smartphones and network infrastructure into industrial verticals. Its technologies, Sidelink enhancement for V2X communication, advanced positioning, RedCap for mass-market IoT, and UAV enhancement for drone operations are designed to make 5G-Advanced the connectivity backbone for automotive, manufacturing, logistics, and public safety industries.

The patent data reflects a deliberate strategic choice by several key players. Pillar 2 accounts for 30.5% of declared SEP families and 31.3% of 3GPP Change Requests, a near-even ratio that signals this pillar is in active development without yet being oversaturated. Companies, including InterDigital and LG Electronics, have concentrated approximately 45% of their declared 5G-Advanced SEP families in Pillar 2, well above the industry average, reflecting a calculated bet on vertical industry licensing as the highest-growth opportunity in the current cycle.

The strategic logic is sound. Automotive OEMs, industrial manufacturers, and logistics operators are becoming structurally dependent on 5G-Advanced technologies embedded in their products and operations, entering a licensing relationship with telecom SEP holders from a position of limited prior experience and significant commercial exposure. This is a licensing frontier with fewer established precedents than the handset market, and correspondingly more negotiating latitude for well-positioned IP holders.

“Pillar 2 creates licensing exposure for industries that have never previously negotiated telecom SEP royalties. Organizations with strong Pillar 2 portfolios in Sidelink, positioning, and RedCap are positioned to define the licensing terms for these verticals before precedents are set, a first-mover advantage that compounds once royalty frameworks are established.”

Sidelink Enhancement: The Essential Patent Layer for Every Connected Vehicle on the Road

Sidelink enables direct device-to-device (D2D) communication, bypassing the need for communication to go through a base station. In 5G-Advanced, enhancements focus on improving reliability and power efficiency, particularly for Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communications and public safety applications. From a product standpoint, this makes Sidelink essential for autonomous vehicles, smart transportation systems, and emergency response systems, which require continuous, low-latency, and secure communication. For the automotive and transportation sectors, Sidelink patents offer crucial licensing opportunities as these industries move towards smart mobility solutions and automated vehicles.

Sidelink has been a 3GPP standardization priority since Release 16, giving it more patent maturity than other Pillar 2 technologies, but the automotive application layer is still generating new essential patent opportunities as V2X use cases are refined in Releases 18 and 19. For automotive OEMs and tier-1 suppliers building connected vehicle platforms, understanding Sidelink SEP exposure, particularly from Qualcomm, Huawei, LG, and Ericsson, is becoming a procurement and product liability issue, not just a licensing one.

Advanced Positioning: The Technology Turning 5G-Advanced Into a Precision Infrastructure Layer

While foundational 5G provided basic location services, 5G-Advanced takes it a step further, offering centimeter-level accuracy using wider bandwidths and multi-cell positioning. This enhanced positioning enables highly precise location tracking, even in environments where GPS signals are unavailable, such as indoors or in urban canyons. For products, this technology is critical for industries requiring real-time location intelligence, such as automated warehouses, robotics, and indoor asset tracking. At the product level, this means faster, more reliable tracking for goods and personnel, which can drive efficiencies in inventory management, supply chain automation, and asset management.

RedCap: The Patent Layer That Makes 5G-Advanced Commercially Viable for Billions of IoT Devices

Also referred to as NR-Light, RedCap bridges the gap between high-performance 5G and low-power NB-IoT (Narrowband IoT). Designed for devices like smartwatches, industrial sensors, and surveillance cameras, RedCap offers higher speeds than basic IoT devices, with significantly lower complexity and longer battery life than typical 5G smartphones. This makes it the ideal solution for the mass-market 5G IoT adoption. For product developers, RedCap enables cost-effective IoT deployments, perfect for use cases requiring low-cost, low-power, long-battery-life devices, such as smart homes, wearables, and smart cities. RedCap ensures that 5G technology can be scaled across a wide variety of IoT devices, making it crucial to achieving the next stage of connected-world growth.

UAV Enhancement: The 5G-Advanced Patent Opportunity in the Fastest-Growing Commercial Airspace

The increasing use of drones and UAVs across sectors such as logistics, aerial monitoring, and delivery services places significant demands on network capabilities. 5G-Advanced optimizes the network to support high-altitude drones, addressing challenges such as interference from ground-based towers. It ensures robust Command and Control (C2) links, which are crucial for Beyond-Visual-Line-of-Sight (BVLOS) operations. At the product level, this technology enables autonomous drone flights, which are essential for the future of logistics (e.g., drone-delivered packages), agriculture, and environmental monitoring. For licensors, UAV enhancement patents present vital opportunities in emerging industries such as unmanned logistics, drone-based monitoring, and remote surveillance, driving new business avenues in aerial operations.

Pillar 3: The Highest-Stakes Gap in the Current Patent Cycle, Where 6G Is Being Built Through 5G-Advanced Standards Work

Pillar 3 is where the most consequential long-term activity is happening and where the largest gap between standards development and declared IP exists. Its technologies, AI-native air interfaces, Non-Terrestrial Networks, Integrated Sensing and Communication, XR optimizations, and Ambient IoT, do not incrementally improve the network. They fundamentally redefine what a mobile network can deliver.

The standardization data make the stakes explicit.

Pillar 3 accounts for 45.6% of all 3GPP Change Requests, the highest of any pillar, yet only 21.9% of declared SEP families have been formally asserted against it. This declaration gap is not a sign of weak IP activity. Patent filings in AI/ML for telecom grew 151% between 2020 and 2022. XR filings grew 104%. NTN filings grew 76%. The activity is intense, but it is still working through prosecution pipelines and declaration processes. The wave is forming. It has not yet broken.

What makes this gap strategically significant is its direct connection to 6G. The ITU-R IMT-2030 framework, the official architecture for 6G, finalized in November 2023, identifies AI-native communication, integrated sensing, ubiquitous satellite connectivity, and ambient IoT as four of its six foundational usage scenarios. These map precisely onto Pillar 3’s technology areas. The organizations most actively contributing to Pillar 3 standards work today are simultaneously building the IP foundations of 6G, a compounding advantage that will be difficult and expensive to replicate once those foundations are set.

“Pillar 3 represents the largest concentrated IP opportunity in the current mobile communications cycle. The declaration gap between CR activity and declared SEPs signals that essential patents in the most commercially significant technology areas are still being filed. Organizations with the technical capability to contribute to AI-native, NTN, and ISAC standardization in Releases 19 and 20 are building positions that will determine licensing leverage not just in 5G-Advanced, but in 6G.”

The Competitive Landscape: Who Is Leading the 5G-Advanced Race

The 5G-Advanced competitive landscape cannot be read from a single metric. A company’s SEP declaration count tells you where its IP is concentrated today, but not where its standards contributions are pointing tomorrow. Its Change Request volume indicates how actively it is shaping specifications, but not whether those CRs translate into defensible patent positions. Its market share in network equipment reflects current revenue, but not licensing leverage in vertical industries it has never previously served.

*Note: Featuring the top 20 companies in alphabetical order with the highest number of declared patent families and proposed change requests to 3GPP relevant to 5G-Advanced.

The most useful analytical framework combines four dimensions: declared SEP families (current IP position), 3GPP CR activity (forward IP pipeline), pillar distribution (strategic intent), and commercial ecosystem (ability to convert IP into revenue). Applied across the top 20 companies contributing to 5G-Advanced, this framework reveals a more fragmented and more strategically deliberate competitive landscape than in previous network generations.

What follows is an analysis of the major competitive tiers, the strategic logic behind each company’s positioning, and the forward outlook for how competitive dynamics will shift as Pillar 3 technologies move from standardization into commercial deployment.

Tier 1: The Foundational IP Holders

These are organizations whose combination of SEP volume, CR activity, and pillar distribution gives them structural leverage across the 5G-Advanced licensing landscape, not just in one technology area or one industry vertical, but across multiple pillars simultaneously.

Huawei

Huawei holds the largest declared 5G-Advanced SEP portfolio of any company globally, continuing the leadership position it has maintained across 4G and 5G. Its CR activity in 3GPP Releases 18 and 19 is consistently among the highest of any contributor, and its pillar distribution is notably broad, with significant positions across all three pillars rather than concentration in any single one.

Huawei’s Pillar 3 activity is particularly significant. The company is among the most active contributors to AI-native air interface standardization, NTN specifications, and ISAC work items. precisely the areas where the declaration gap is widest and the forward IP opportunity is greatest. Its 5.5G product portfolio, launched commercially in 2024, demonstrates an ability to translate standards contributions into deployable products at a speed that few competitors can match.

The strategic challenge Huawei faces is well-documented: US export controls limit its access to advanced semiconductor manufacturing, constraining its ability to compete in Western markets. However, these restrictions have not meaningfully reduced Huawei’s standards contribution activity or its SEP filing pace. The company continues to invest heavily in R&D, spending approximately ¥ 164.7 billion ($22.6 billion) in 2023, representing roughly 23.4% of its total revenue. Its licensing revenue from existing SEP portfolios provides a largely independent revenue stream, largely independent of its equipment sales.

Future Outlook: Huawei’s 5G-Advanced position is likely to remain dominant in declared SEP volume through the Release 18 and 19 cycles. Its forward positioning in Pillar 3, particularly AI/ML and ISAC, suggests it is building toward a 6G SEP position that could be even more strategically significant than its 5G position, given the centrality of those technologies to the IMT-2030 framework. 

Ericsson

Ericsson occupies a strategically distinctive position in the 5G-Advanced landscape: it is simultaneously the world’s second-largest network equipment vendor by revenue, one of the top five 5G-Advanced SEP holders, and one of the most commercially aggressive patent licensors in the industry. This combination, infrastructure revenue plus licensing revenue, gives it a dual-track commercial model that most competitors cannot replicate.

Ericsson’s licensing program generated approximately SEK 9.6 billion ($880 million) in patent licensing revenue in 2023, a figure that has grown consistently as its 5G SEP portfolio has matured. 

The company has published a public licensing rate for 5G handsets of $2.50 per device, which it considers a FRAND rate for a license to its essential patent portfolio

Ericsson’s pillar distribution is weighted toward Pillar 1, reflecting its core strength in RAN performance technology. Still, it has made deliberate investments in Pillar 3, particularly in AI-native RAN through its Cognitive Network platform and in NTN through partnerships with satellite operators, including Thales and Telesat. Its acquisition of Vonage for $6.2 billion in 2022, which gave it a cloud communications and API platform, reflects a strategic bet on the Pillar 2 vertical services opportunity, even if the integration has been more challenging than initially projected.

The company’s CR activity in Releases 18 and 19 is heavily concentrated in AI/ML integration and advanced MIMO, areas where its commercial products are most directly aligned with its standards contributions. This alignment between product roadmap and standards activity is a characteristic of Ericsson’s approach that gives its SEPs higher commercial validity than patents filed purely for portfolio breadth.

Future Outlook: Ericsson’s 5G-Advanced licensing revenue will grow as its Release 18 SEPs are declared and licensing agreements with device manufacturers are renegotiated to include 5G-Advanced terms. 

The company has publicly signaled that it expects its licensing revenue to grow significantly through the 5G-Advanced cycle, targeting a portfolio that covers the AI-native capabilities that will be central to both late 5G-Advanced and early 6G. Its dual position as infrastructure vendor and licensor gives it commercial resilience; if equipment market conditions deteriorate, licensing revenue provides a floor, and vice versa.

Tier 2: Specialized Positioning and Vertical Leverage

These companies have made deliberate strategic choices to concentrate their 5G-Advanced IP in specific pillars or technology areas, trading breadth for depth, and positioning themselves as indispensable contributors in defined licensing domains.

InterDigital

InterDigital is the most commercially focused pure-play patent licensing company in the 5G-Advanced landscape. Unlike Ericsson or Nokia, which balance licensing revenue against equipment sales, or Qualcomm, which balances licensing against chip sales, InterDigital’s entire business model is built on generating royalty revenue from essential patents. This creates a uniquely focused approach to standards participation and IP filing.

InterDigital has concentrated approximately 45% of its declared 5G-Advanced SEP families in Pillar 2, well above the industry average of 30.5%, reflecting a deliberate bet on vertical industry licensing as the highest-growth opportunity in the 5G-Advanced cycle. Its focus areas within Pillar 2 include Sidelink, advanced positioning, and RedCap, precisely the technologies most relevant to automotive, industrial IoT, and smart city licensing opportunities.

InterDigital’s licensing revenue reached $604 million in 2023, and the company has publicly communicated expectations of significant growth through the 5G and 5G-Advanced licensing cycle. 

Its active litigation history, including cases against Apple, Samsung, and various Chinese manufacturers, reflects both the value of its portfolio and the commercial intensity of the licensing environment in which it operates.

Future Outlook: InterDigital’s Pillar 2 concentration positions it well for the emerging vertical licensing market. As automotive OEMs, industrial manufacturers, and logistics companies become dependent on 5G-Advanced Sidelink and positioning technologies, InterDigital’s portfolio in these areas will give it licensing leverage in industries with large revenues and limited prior exposure to telecom SEP royalties. The company’s strategic challenge is sustaining the R&D investment required to build comparable positions in Pillar 3, where the longest-term licensing value will reside, while managing the costs of an active global licensing program.

LG Electronics

LG Electronics’ 5G-Advanced patent strategy is one of the more surprising features of the competitive landscape. Despite exiting the smartphone business in 2021, which eliminated its most direct device-licensing revenue stream, LG has maintained and even accelerated its 5G-Advanced standards contributions and SEP filing activity. Like InterDigital, it has concentrated approximately 45% of its declared SEP families in Pillar 2.

The strategic logic is clear: LG’s core business divisions, home appliances, automotive components through LG Magna e-Powertrain, and OLED display technology, are all direct beneficiaries of Pillar 2 technologies. Smart home devices depend on RedCap and Ambient IoT connectivity. Automotive electronics depend on Sidelink and advanced positioning. LG’s 5G-Advanced SEP portfolio, therefore, serves a dual function: generating outbound licensing revenue and protecting its own product divisions from inbound royalty exposure.

Future Outlook: LG’s Pillar 2 concentration aligns with the trajectory of its core businesses. As connected home appliances, smart vehicles, and industrial displays become standard product categories, LG’s SEP portfolio in the technologies that enable them will generate licensing revenue from competitors in those markets, a revenue stream that does not require LG to win market share in devices, only to hold essential patents in standards that those devices must implement.

Tier 3: Research Institutions and Emerging Contributors

ETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute)

South Korea’s state-funded research institute is one of the more unusual participants in the top 20 5G-Advanced contributors. ETRI holds no commercial product business; it exists purely to conduct R&D and contribute to standards. Its 5G-Advanced CR activity and SEP declarations are therefore entirely forward-looking, designed to establish IP positions that can be licensed to the Korean industry or used to strengthen South Korea’s bargaining position in international standards negotiations.

ETRI’s pillar distribution is heavily weighted toward Pillar 3, with above-average CR activity in AI-native interfaces and ISAC. This reflects South Korea’s national 6G R&D strategy, within which ETRI plays a coordinating role. The institute’s standards contributions effectively represent the Korean government’s investment in the 6G IP landscape, building a national portfolio ahead of the commercialization wave.

Apple

Apple’s emergence as a significant 3GPP contributor following its 2019 acquisition of Intel’s modem business represents one of the most consequential shifts in the 5G-Advanced standards landscape. Apple has invested heavily in building its own baseband capability. The Apple C1 modem, introduced in early 2025, is the first commercial product from this effort, and its standards contributions have grown accordingly.

Apple’s CR activity is concentrated in device-side power efficiency, XR optimizations, and positioning, areas directly relevant to its product roadmap across iPhone, Apple Watch, and Vision Pro. Its SEP filing pace in these areas has accelerated significantly, and industry analysts expect Apple to emerge as a more significant SEP holder in 5G-Advanced than in foundational 5G, reducing its net royalty exposure and strengthening its cross-licensing position with Tier 1 portfolio holders.

The Declaration Gap: Where the Next Wave of SEPs Will Emerge

The single most important forward-looking metric in the 5G-Advanced competitive landscape is the relationship between CR activity and declared SEPs across the three pillars. As established earlier, Pillar 3 accounts for 45.6% of CRs but only 21.9% of declared SEPs, a gap that represents the largest concentrated IP opportunity in the current mobile communications cycle.

Based on the CR activity patterns of the top contributors, the next wave of SEP declarations will be concentrated in five specific technology areas, in approximate order of expected declaration volume:

1. AI/ML in the air interface: The highest CR activity of any Pillar 3 technology, combined with the longest lag between filing and declaration due to prosecution complexity. Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei, Samsung, and Qualcomm are expected to lead declaration volume, with Apple and Intel holding smaller but strategically significant positions.
2. NTN: Growing rapidly in both CR volume and commercial deployment. Huawei, Qualcomm, Samsung, and MediaTek are expected to lead, with satellite operators including Thales Alenia Space and SES beginning to appear in declaration data as their technical contributions are recognized.
3. ISAC: The widest declaration gap relative to CR activity, reflecting the technology’s relatively later standardization timeline. Huawei, Nokia, Samsung, and Intel are the most active CR contributors, and their declaration activity is expected to accelerate significantly through 2026-2027.
4. XR optimizations: Declaration activity growing rapidly, driven by the commercial deployment of XR headsets. Qualcomm, Ericsson, and Samsung are leading, with Apple’s contributions in device-side XR power management expected to generate a meaningful declaration tranche.
5. Ambient IoT: The least mature standardization area in Pillar 3, meaning the declaration wave is furthest in the future, but also the area with the widest open filing window for organizations seeking to establish early positions.

Conclusion

The commercial weight of the mobile communications industry is shifting, away from incremental network performance improvements and toward the intelligent, sensing-capable, globally connected infrastructure that will underpin the digital economy of the 2030s. 

By 2030, the industries structurally dependent on 5G-Advanced capabilities, connected vehicles, industrial IoT, immersive reality, satellite communications, and smart city infrastructure, will collectively represent markets measured in the trillions of dollars. These are not telecom markets. They are the markets of the broader global economy, and 5G-Advanced is becoming foundational infrastructure for all of them.

The trajectory from here is defined. 

3GPP Release 20, the final 5G-Advanced release and the most direct bridge to 6G, is being scoped now. ITU-R is targeting finalized IMT-2030 specifications by 2027–2028. 

The first commercial 6G deployments are projected for 2030–2032 in leading markets. The declaration gap in Pillar 3, where 45.6% of Change Requests sit against only 21.9% of declared SEPs, will close as these technologies move from standardization into commercial deployment. When it does, the competitive hierarchy of 5G-Advanced licensing will be fixed in ways that are very difficult to renegotiate. 

The organizations that have built deep positions ahead of that closure will be the ones defining licensing terms and setting royalty precedents across industries that have never previously negotiated telecom SEP royalties.

Understanding precisely who holds what, how SEPs are distributed across the three pillars, which organizations are winning the CR-to-declaration race, and where the largest gaps remain, is the starting point for you to act on this opportunity. 

GreyB’s 5G-Advanced Ownership Report provides exactly that intelligence: a comprehensive, data-driven analysis of the current IP landscape, pillar-by-pillar competitive positioning, and the emerging strategies of the organizations shaping the standard.