GSA Confirms LTE Subscriptions are now more than 25% of all Global mobile Subscriptions

9 Mar 2017

GSA Confirms LTE Subscriptions are now more than 25% of all Global mobile Subscriptions

9 March 2017, London – The Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) confirms that LTE subscriptions now account for 25.1% of all mobile subscriptions globally. Analysing the latest information, provided to GSA by Ovum, shows growth of 818 million new LTE subscriptions in 2016 compared to 596 million in 2015. LTE and WCDMA are now the only mobile technologies that are growing in subscriptions, although WCDMA subscriptions are experiencing slowing growth.

By the end of 2016, LTE subsciptions, according to Ovum data, stood at 1.920 billion compared to 1.102 billion in December 2015.

The Asia region continues to lead LTE adoption with 59.1% market share although this market share is likely to be impacted in 2017 by accelerating LTE adoption in other regions, especially in Middle East (LTE subscriptions growing at 166% Year on Year), Eastern Europe (132% YoY) as well as Africa and Latin America & the Caribbean (120% YoY).

Joe Barrett, President of GSA, said, “Over the past year LTE subscriptions have grown substantially and we are now seeing all regions moving swiftly to adopt LTE as their primary mobile technology to deliver a true mobile broadband customer experience. GSA continues to predict that LTE, LTE-Advanced and LTE-Advanced Pro subscriptions will overtake 3G/WCDMA-HSPA in 2019.”

About the GSA

GSA promotes the 3GPP technology roadmap – 3G; 4G; 5G including NB-IoT, VoLTE, LTE-V, LTE-U, LTE Broadcast, mobile device availability and features, etc. and represents companies across the worldwide mobile ecosystem engaged in the supply of infrastructure, semiconductors, test equipment, devices, applications and mobile support services. The GSA Executive Board comprises of Ericsson, Huawei, Intel, Nokia and Qualcomm covering close to 100% of all mobile network infrastructure deployments.

For more information, please visit the GSA corporate website at www.gsacom.com. Follow the GSA on Twitter: @gsacom.

Media Contacts           press@gsacom.com