LexisNexis Report Shows Huawei, Qualcomm, Samsung, and Ericsson Leading Patent Race in $15 Billion 5G Licensing Market

Published by LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions, New Analysis Reinforces Importance of Patent Accuracy for Companies to Increase Licensing Revenue

NEW YORK, January 26, 2026 — LexisNexis^® Legal & Professional, a leading provider of intelligent patent analytics, today released “Who Is Leading the 5G Patent Race 2026,” a new analysis tracking the companies, economics, and trends driving the 5G patent space. The report was published by LexisNexis^® Intellectual Property Solutions, the company’s global business unit dedicated to patent analytics, portfolio strategy, and licensing intelligence.

According to the report, the global 5G patent landscape continues to be dominated by major patentholders whose standard-essential patents (SEP) underpin an estimated $15 billion annual 5G licensing market. The report also reinforces the importance of patent data accuracy as a business driver for individual companies, as millions in annual licensing value can shift as courts, licensors, and implementers rely on patent data to inform licensing negotiations, litigation strategies, and FRAND determinations.

As 5G implementation accelerates beyond smartphones into industrial IoT, automotive, healthcare, and critical infrastructure, SEPs are playing an increasingly central role in shaping global technology markets. The 2026 analysis examines leadership across granted and active 5G patent family declarations, value-adjusted portfolio indicators, and technical contributions to the 3GPP standardization process.

Key findings from the 2026 analysis include:

• Huawei, Qualcomm, Samsung, and Ericsson continued to lead the global ranking of 5G patent powerhouses as assessed by granted and active 5G patent family volume, portfolio impact, and standards contributions.
• Patent data accuracy has a significant financial impact, as even small discrepancies in perceived portfolio share can translate into hundreds of millions of dollars in annual licensing value in a $15 billion global market.
• New entrants to the Top 50 list in 2026 include research-focused organizations, licensing and investment-led IP holders, and automotive and IoT connectivity specialists, which replaced several operator-centric and diversified industrial portfolios that fell below the Top 50 threshold.
• Top 50 5G patent owners reflected broad geographic diversity, with companies headquartered in China (14), Japan (9), the United States (9), Europe (7), Taiwan (5), South Korea (5), and Canada (1).
• Patent data is increasingly relied upon in FRAND determinations, making the quality, consistency, and verification of declaration data a critical factor for both licensors and implementers

Top 10 5G Patent Leaders 2026

The Top 10 ultimate patent owners based on granted and active 5G patent families, value-adjusted portfolio indicators, and sustained participation in 3GPP standards development.

Rank	Company	HQ	Rank by 5G patent families	Rank by Patent Asset Index of 5G patent families	Rank by 5G-relevant 3GPP contributions
1	Huawei	CN	1	2	1
2	Qualcomm	US	2	1	4
3	Samsung	KR	4	3	5
4	Ericsson	SE	5	5	2
5	LG Electronics	KR	3	4	10
6	ZTE	CN	6	6	6
7	Nokia	FI	7	8	3
8	vivo Holdings	CN	9	10	11
9	CICT (CICT Group + CICT Mobile)	CN	10	14	7
10	Oppo	CN	8	13	14

“As 5G licensing moves deeper into industrial, automotive, and infrastructure markets, the financial stakes tied to patent data accuracy continue to rise,” said Tim Pohlmann, Director of SEP Analytics for LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions. “In a licensing environment of this scale, even small differences in how 5G patent portfolios are measured can materially influence negotiations. That is why verified, unbiased data has become essential, not only for understanding who leads the 5G patent race, but for supporting defensible, data-driven FRAND discussions.”

Raising the bar on 5G declaration data

The 2026 analysis is grounded in the Cellular Verified initiative led by LexisNexis Intellectual Property Solutions. Through this initiative, LexisNexis compared public ETSI declaration data with internal records from 35 ETSI-declaring companies, applying rigorous matching, normalization, patent family expansion, and corporate-tree ownership analysis.

This validation process is designed to reduce bias introduced by differing declaration practices and to provide a more accurate and impartial representation of declared 5G patent portfolios, an increasingly critical requirement as rankings and portfolio assessments are used as economic and legal reference points in licensing and litigation contexts.

The full “Who Is Leading the 5G Patent Race 2026” analysis, including the Top 50 5G Patent Rankings 2026 and detailed information on the underlying data methodology and validation process, is available at www.LexisNexisIP.com/5G-Report-2026

About LexisNexis^® Legal & Professional 

LexisNexis^® Legal & Professional provides AI-powered legal, regulatory, business information, analytics, and workflows that help customers increase their productivity, improve decision-making, achieve better outcomes, and advance the rule of law around the world. As a digital pioneer, the company was the first to bring legal and business information online with its Lexis^® and Nexis^® services. LexisNexis Legal & Professional, which serves customers in more than 150 countries with 11,800 employees worldwide, is part of RELX, a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers.

About LexisNexis^® Intellectual Property Solutions   

LexisNexis^® Intellectual Property Solutions brings clarity to innovation for businesses worldwide. We enable innovators to accomplish more by helping them make informed decisions, be more productive, comply with regulations, and ultimately achieve a competitive advantage for their business. Our broad suite of workflow and analytics solutions (LexisNexis^® PatentSight+, LexisNexis^® Classification, LexisNexis^® TechDiscovery, LexisNexis^® IPlytics, LexisNexis PatentOptimizer^®, LexisNexis PatentAdvisor^®, and LexisNexis TotalPatent One^®, LexisNexis^® IP DataDirect), enables companies to be more efficient and effective at bringing meaningful innovations to our world. We are proud to directly support and serve these innovators in their endeavors to better humankind. 

 

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