The adoption of fourth-generation LTE mobile services is accelerating, according to a quarterly report from Maravedis, a global provider of market intelligence and advisory services.
Maravedis found that 35 operators had commercially launched FDD (frequency division duplexing) at the end of the third quarter and the firm anticipates that the number of LTE subscribers will reach 448 million by 2016.
During the third quarter, Nokia Siemens Networks-Motorola and Huawei fetched most of the LTE infrastructure contracts, with 29 percent and 26 percent share, respectively, according to Maravedis. In April, Nokia Siemens Networks completed its $975 million acquisition of certain wireless network infrastructure assets belonging to Motorola Solutions. Maravedis said that Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens are among the leading providers of LTE infrastructure for the top 50 LTE operators.
Mobile operators also are experimenting with another form of Long Term Evolution technology known as TD (time division)-LTE, and the Asia Pacific region is leading the world with 12 operator trials. Europe has had nine of them.
"Although we have seen some commercial TD-LTE deployments happening in 2011 outside Asia, these deployments will not drive the economies of scale expected from the deployments that will occur in China and India next year," said Basharat Ashai, co-author of Maravedis' 4GCounts Quarterly Report, "and volume production of TD-LTE handsets will not be realized until the end of 2012."
Maravedis expects that DT-LTE smartphones will be poised for commercial launch in early 2013. The market intelligence firm forecasts that smartphones will account for 47 percent of the 4G device market by 2016, followed by USB dongles (20 percent) and tablets (16 percent).