A new report from Pyramid Research expects worldwide 4G LTE handset sales to reach 490.5 million in 2017, which is a compound annual growth rate of 73% over this year’s predicted figures. It means LTE handsets will account for 20.7% of all handset sales in five years’ time.
The company says most LTE subscriptions are currently data services for computers and tablets, although handset sales will start to dominate in the next few years. By 2017, 82% of handset sales in South Korea, 79% of handset sales in Japan and 71% of handset sales in the USA are expected to be LTE.
LTE services are expected to comprise just 0.8% of global mobile phone subscriptions by the end of this year and are forecast to reach almost 10% of mobile subscriptions - 802 million connections - by 2017.
[Report]