The US chip giant Qualcomm Inc will partner with China Mobile and ZTE Corp on 5G trials that are essential to accelerating the commercial application of the technology in China.

The trials, scheduled to take place in the second half of this year, will conduct interoperability testing based on the 5G New Radio specifications under development by 3GPP, a collaboration initiative between different groups of telecommunications associations.

"The testing and trials will showcase how 5G NR technologies can efficiently achieve multi-gigabit per second data rates at lower latency and better reliability than today's network," Qualcomm said in a statement.

China Mobile is the world's largest telecom carrier by subscribers and ZTE is China's second-largest telecom equipment maker.

The trials, which will use 3.5GHz spectrum, are intended to drive the commercialization of 5G NR technologies and enable timely commercial network launches, Qualcomm added.