Interesting that these articles popped up at the same time. It seems that Samsung will have a 5G compatible phone on the market within 6 months, whereas we are looking at the better part of 2 years for a 5G iPhone.
Now, both ecosystems tend to have a lot of lock-in, but objectively, will this hurt Apple to wait so long, or will it not make much difference since many networks might not even support it for a while?
A 5G phone
Verizon
Lol.
will this hurt Apple to wait so long
Not at all; 5G is absolutely useless for the consumer at the moment. Properly done 4G/LTE is more than powerful enough for most (all?) purposes, and if the carriers canāt do proper LTE why expect them to do a good job with 5G?
will it not make much difference since many networks might not even support it for a while?
Same story with iPhone XSā eSIM; nobody supports it and probably will not for a while, and doesnāt seem to be making any differences in terms of sales. To be fair, when I look at the spec I canāt really blame the carriers for this, but then again they were involved in the design of it (otherwise why would the spec be so awful? 
) so really no excuse for not implementing what they asked for in the first place.
Donāt think it will be a problem for apple to be fair.
IIRC when 4G was first delivered, the performance was relatively poor (at least in Edinburgh), 3G was faster!
Itāll be the same for 5G, Apple will come along when itās been widely rolled out, a standard has been set and will deliver āthe fastest iPhone everā 
I have to say 4G from both o2 and EE was spot on at the begging as there werenāt too many people on it. As more and more users started connecting to it I can sensibly feel the over-subscription in densely populated areas such as London (fyi EE still have some brilliantly speedy spots here and there even in London but it was definitely better before).
Singling out the biggest & cheapest manufacturer of 5G equipment āfor being Chineseā probably wonāt enable the new generation to do quick market penetration so I expect slow roll-out of the serviceā¦ and probably no iPhones supporting it before you have at least 10% coverage of America 
Personally I donāt think its going to make much difference either way for the next couple of years.
Iām not that excited for 5g, unless data limits are scrapped it makes little difference how quickly I can use up my limited data allowance.
However where I do think 5g will likely benefit is people living and working in places like London, where mobile networks can be so congested its like been on dial-up.
Up north though I can be in a field in the middle of nowhere and get 50mbps+ over 4g, the same as been in the town I work in or at home. In theory great, however in reality it makes no difference to the 12mbps+ i was getting on 3g.
Isnāt that usual for Apple anyway? Donāt think 4G was out for a year or so before they jumped on, unless I am remembering wrong.
Early days for 5G anyway.