VVC Adoption Accelerates as Mobile Hardware Breaks Through Codec Deployment Barrier

Dylan Zhou, Access Advance

WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES, October 8, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Versatile Video Coding is moving closer to mainstream deployment as smartphone manufacturers, semiconductor suppliers and streaming providers begin resolving the hardware and ecosystem dependencies that have slowed adoption of the next-generation video compression standard.

The shift is particularly significant in mobile devices. While VVC gained early traction in televisions and personal computers, smartphones represented a major gap in the device ecosystem. That is beginning to change as manufacturers prepare VVC-capable products and supporting mobile chipsets move toward commercial availability in the second half of 2026.

These developments are moving VVC from early-adopter stage to early-majority phase, according to Dylan Zhou, Executive Vice President and Head of Licensing Asia at Access Advance during an executive vidcast interview for journalists. He pointed to Android OS support, streaming deployments, forthcoming mobile silicon and growing manufacturer participation in the VVC Advance patent pool as evidence that VVC is approaching a broader commercial deployment cycle.

This new level of industry engagement is resolving one of the central conundrums facing new video codecs. Content providers have had limited incentive to encode and distribute content in a new format until enough compatible devices are available. Device manufacturers, meanwhile, have had less reason to support a codec without sufficient content to justify implementation.

These interdependencies have contributed to a prolonged experimental period for VVC. The market is now moving into a growth phase as hardware support, licensing clarity, software availability and rising video content supply converge.

Mobile Support Begins Reshaping the Adoption Equation

Six major smartphone brands, Honor, Huawei, OPPO, Samsung, Vivo and Xiaomi, are already licensees of the VVC Advance Patent Pool administered by Access Advance, a group administering patent pools that bring together essential patents from close to 50 licensors to provide device manufacturers and content distributors with a centralized mechanism for licensing technologies including VVC and other modern video codecs.

According to Zhou, those six manufacturers collectively account for roughly 62% of the global smartphone market. Smartphone manufacturers are preparing products with hardware VVC support in silicon, with some launches anticipated as early as the third or fourth quarter of 2026. From Zhou’s perspective, that silicon support for mobile devices represents an important milestone. Hardware-based encoding and decoding can improve the practicality of deploying advanced codecs on consumer mobile devices, particularly in smartphones where processing performance and power consumption matter.

In the meantime, he noted, software availability is also advancing. Compression optimization, mobile delivery and software-based implementations are making VVC easier to integrate once compatible hardware becomes widely available. The resulting dynamic is solving the chicken-and-egg problem that has historically complicated adoption of new codecs.

Patent licensing is another part of the adoption equation. Access Advance has sought to reduce incremental licensing costs for companies moving from HEVC to VVC through its Multi-Codec Bridging Agreement. Zhou noted that Samsung and Sharp have also joined the VVC Advance pool as licensors, significantly increasing the volume of VVC-essential patents available through the pool. Access Advance says the pool now contains more than 6,000 patents and the list continues to grow as new licensors are added and new patents are issued.

Beyond the implications for smartphone manufacturers, Zhou believes that a larger installed base of compatible devices also gives streaming providers greater economic justification for encoding and distributing VVC content. He mentioned the Video Distribution Patent Pool (VDP Pool) offered by Access Advance, and how its design will facilitate the adoption of new and better codecs, such as VVC, in video streaming services. The VDP Pool has recently added Meta and Alibaba as licensees this year alongside a wave of new licensors. Zhou points to this as evidence that major streaming platforms are choosing to support a balanced and transparent patent pool with fair and predictable royalty rates as their preferred path to resolve video codec licensing issues.

Video Consumption Growth Strengthens the Economics of Compression

The case for more efficient video compression has become increasingly compelling as the underlying volume of video expands. Streaming services have dramatically increased content production, while connected devices are generating additional streams of machine-created video. Vehicles, security systems, cameras, doorbells, industrial environments and other connected systems increasingly capture, transmit and store visual information, especially as generative AI further facilitates the ease with which humans and machines create video.

The infrastructure implications are already becoming visible. Market analysts agree that media streaming accounts for the vast majority of cellular traffic, while higher video quality is increasing bandwidth requirements. They point to growing upstream video from cameras used as sensors for AI-powered analytics across transportation, agriculture, energy, public safety and other industrial applications.

As video volumes rise, improvements in compression optimize storage, network capacity, cloud infrastructure costs, and the video quality that can be delivered within available bandwidth.

Multiple Codecs Settle Into an Expanding Video Market

VVC's expansion does not mean the market is moving toward a single dominant video codec. Instead, the industry is developing into a multi-codec environment in which VVC, HEVC and AV1 can coexist across different applications while older technologies are gradually replaced.

Zhou expects much of the opportunity for newer codecs to come from the continuing displacement of AVC and VP9 rather than from competition among VVC, HEVC and AV1. At the same time, rapid growth in overall video creation, distribution and consumption will likely expand the addressable market for multiple compression technologies, he said.

The Outlook for VVC Adoption

The next several quarters should provide a clearer indication of whether these developments translate into widespread deployment in consumer products and services. But it is now clear that VVC has moved beyond a period in which adoption was limited to primarily technical evaluations and isolated implementations.

If VVC-capable smartphones begin reaching consumers in meaningful volumes by the end of 2026, the installed-base barrier that has constrained content deployment will diminish rapidly. Zhou contends that this would mark an important transition for VVC. The codec's next phase will depend on how fast the device, content, and silicon supply can scale together, he concluded, while noting that Access Advance will continue its efforts to offer transparent and efficient licensing solutions that facilitate the widespread adoption of VVC.

Airrion Andrews
Mindshare Capture