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PRESS RELEASE

GSA confirms 4,416 LTE user devices, researches new bands

February 12, 2016: The latest update to the Status of the LTE Ecosystem report published this week by GSA (Global mobile Suppliers Association) confirms accelerating growth of the LTE ecosystem and expansion in the availability and performance of LTE-Advanced devices. The report covers LTE FDD and TDD (TD-LTE) devices. 4,416 LTE user devices, including frequency and operator variants, from 369 suppliers are verified by GSA as announced in the market. 1,770 devices have been added to GSA’s LTE devices database (GAMBoD) since February 2015, confirming 67% annual growth. The number of LTE device suppliers grew 34% in the same period.

The scope of the research for the report was widened this time to include the device ecosystems for band 30 (2.3 GHz WCS spectrum) and band 21 (1.5 GHz). Terminals capable of supporting LTE Broadcast services enabled by eMBMS were also identified.

Alan Hadden, VP of Research, GSA, said: “With deployment of LTE-Advanced systems supporting Category 6 user devices (theoretical peak downlink up to 300 Mbps) the major industry trend, there is a good and expanding choice of user devices. 259 products support Category 6 or higher, including small cells, routers/gateways, MiFis, smartphones and tablets. 8 of those are Category 9 devices (450 Mbps) and 2 are Category 12 (600 Mbps).”

The smartphone form factor is the largest LTE device category.

2,706 smartphones including operator and frequency variants are announced, giving an improved 61.2% share of all LTE device types. 98% of LTE smartphones are multimode, capable of operating on at least one 3G technology in addition to LTE and almost 50% of LTE phones can operate on 42 Mbps DC-HSPA+ networks.

The LTE-connected tablet PC is another fast-growing category.

For the full press release please download the PDF via the link above.

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