The smartphone has been a fulcrum of innovation for miniaturization and integration ever since the first iPhone arrived in 2007, but 5G brings it not just to a new level but also greater speed of roll-out. This has put enormous pressure on both device makers themselves and their chip suppliers, with demands of innovation and scale economies driving consolidation down to a handful of major players in each case. Smartphone makers have to deal with an increasingly fragmented spectral ecosystem, while squaring up performance, aesthetics, battery life, cost and speed to market. The latter is a particular challenge because lead times in the mobile industry have been declining, and almost demanding a rewrite of Moore’s Law, as rate of increase…