The long-awaited push for Versatile Video Coding (VVC) is no longer a theoretical promise—it is becoming an engineering reality. After years of languishing in technical evaluations and isolated deployments, the next-generation video compression standard is finally gaining the hardware and ecosystem support needed for mainstream adoption, particularly in the mobile devices that dominate consumer viewing habits.
While VVC initially found a foothold in televisions and personal computers, smartphones represented a glaring gap in the device ecosystem. That gap is now closing as manufacturers ready VVC-capable products and the supporting mobile chipsets edge toward commercial availability in the second half of 2026. This shift is especially significant because mobile devices are where the vast majority of video is consumed today.
These developments are pushing VVC from early-adopter territory into what Dylan Zhou, Executive Vice President and Head of Licensing Asia at Access Advance, describes as the early-majority phase. In an executive vidcast interview for journalists, Zhou cited Android OS support, active 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.
For years, a classic chicken-and-egg conundrum has plagued new video codecs. Content providers had little incentive to encode and distribute content in a new format until enough compatible devices existed in the wild. Device manufacturers, in turn, had limited reason to support a codec without sufficient content to justify the implementation costs. That interdependency has prolonged VVC’s experimental period, but the market is now entering a growth phase as hardware support, licensing clarity, software availability, and rising video content supply converge.
Six major smartphone brands—Honor, Huawei, OPPO, Samsung, Vivo, and Xiaomi—are already licensees of the VVC Advance Patent Pool administered by Access Advance. This group brings together essential patents from close to 50 licensors, offering device manufacturers and content distributors a centralized mechanism for licensing VVC and other modern video codecs. According to Zhou, those six manufacturers collectively command roughly 62% of the global smartphone market. Some of these companies are preparing products with hardware VVC support in silicon, with launches anticipated as early as the third or fourth quarter of 2026.
From Zhou’s perspective, that silicon support for mobile devices represents a critical milestone. Hardware-based encoding and decoding can dramatically improve the practicality of deploying advanced codecs on consumer mobile devices, particularly in smartphones where processing performance and power consumption are paramount. In the meantime, software availability is also advancing. Compression optimization, mobile delivery techniques, and software-based implementations are making VVC easier to integrate once compatible hardware becomes widely available.
Patent licensing remains another piece of the adoption puzzle. 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 joined the VVC Advance pool as licensors, significantly increasing the volume of VVC-essential patents available. Access Advance reports the pool now contains more than 6,000 patents, with the list continuing to grow as new licensors are added and new patents are issued.
Beyond smartphone implications, Zhou believes a larger installed base of compatible devices gives streaming providers stronger economic justification for encoding and distributing VVC content. He pointed to the Video Distribution Patent Pool (VDP Pool) offered by Access Advance, which is designed to facilitate adoption of new codecs like VVC in video streaming services. The VDP Pool recently added Meta and Alibaba as licensees this year, alongside a wave of new licensors. Zhou cites 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.
The economic case for more efficient video compression has become increasingly compelling as the sheer volume of video explodes. Streaming services have dramatically increased content production, while connected devices generate 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 lowers the barrier for humans and machines to create video content.
The infrastructure implications are already 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.
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 where 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.
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 where adoption was limited primarily to 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 widespread adoption of VVC.
Airrion Andrews
Mindshare Capture
Why it matters: The convergence of hardware support, patent clarity, and soaring video traffic means VVC is no longer a distant standard—it is poised to reshape how video is compressed and delivered across mobile networks. For consumers, this could mean better streaming quality at lower data usage, while for infrastructure providers, it offers a path to manage exploding bandwidth demands without sacrificing picture quality.
