LTE and 5G Subscribers: March 2021
LTE Subscriber Growth:
By the end of Q4 2020 there were 5.95 billion LTE subscriptions worldwide.
Nearly 507 million LTE subscriptions were added in the preceding 12 months.
9.3% YoY growth.
LTE subscriptions now account for 62.2% of all global mobile subscriptions.
5G subscriptions grew by 57% in the fourth quarter of 2020 to reach nearly 401 million globally (representing 4.19% of the entire global mobile market).
Subscriber Forecast:
According to its latest figures, globally Omdia forecasts there will be around 10.92 billion mobile subscriptions by the end of 2025.
LTE is expected to reach its peak point in terms of technology market share at the end of 2021 (at 64.4%), and to reach its peak point in terms of subscriber numbers at the end of 2022 (at 6.33 billion subscribers).
From 2023 the LTE market is forecast to start to decline slowly, as customers migrate to 5G.
Between end 2021 and end 2025, the share of the market represented by GSM subscriptions will fall from 11.7% to 5.0%, and the share represented by W-CDMA will decline from 17.0% to 10.4%.
By the end of 2025, 5G will account for 31% of the global market (at 3.39 billion subscriptions), although LTE will still be dominant at 53.3% of all global mobile subscriptions.
LTE and 5G Subscribers: March 2021
© GSA 2021
