4G LTE subscribers will increase by 300% in the next two years

According to IHS iSuppli's smart phone and converged device market research report, with the strong support of mobile network operators, the next-generation 4G wireless standard, Long Term Evolution (LTE), will achieve spectacular growth this year and in the coming years. It will be several times or even tens of times, and its number of users will reach a considerable level by 2015.

By the end of 2011, global 4G LTE subscribers are expected to reach 11.6 million, which is 406.2% more than the 300,000 in 2010. It is expected that this alarming growth will be maintained in 2012, and the number of users will surge by 441% to 62.8 million.

In the three years after 2012, its growth will slow down, but it is still considerable: 215% in 2013, 105% in 2014, and 84% in 2015.

By 2015, just five years after its launch, the total number of LTE users will reach 744.2 million, accounting for 10% of the world's approximately 7.3 billion mobile phone users.

According to IHS iSuppli's data, although the number of LTE subscribers will still be lower than those of older wireless technologies by 2015, such as 3.8 billion 2G subscribers and 2.8 billion 3G subscribers, the expansion speed of LTE will be unmatched, especially The number of subscribers to the old wireless standard has continued to slow.

People have different interpretations of 4G, but it is clear that regardless of which definition is used, the next generation of high-speed, low-latency wireless technology has come before us. Known as a speed of up to 100Mb/s and a delay of only tens of milliseconds, the average speed of this next-generation technology can theoretically be up to 10 times that of currently widely used 3G technologies. 4G technology is particularly suitable for real-time applications with large amounts of data, such as video transmission and multiplayer games. For older wireless technologies, these applications quickly devour bandwidth and capacity, making it difficult to transmit images and sound smoothly.

There is currently a universal air interface standard for the long-term LTE future, and the wireless ecosystem can develop next-generation smart phones, networks and applications accordingly. This makes the rapid growth of LTE possible. In the past, there were multiple commercialization standards for 2G and 3G technologies, which led to decentralized markets and the ever-changing air interface, which not only confused users but also hindered the development of the entire industry.

However, as the wireless market matures, technology itself is no longer the difference that consumers value. Therefore, operators, handset manufacturers, and chipset suppliers no longer simply emphasize technical parameters. Instead, they changed their focus and began to think from the perspective of use/behavior. The high speed and low latency of the new technology allowed the device to do something. Attention is now focused on those product elements that can improve the overall user experience, such as attractive mobile user interfaces, applications that can increase fun and productivity, and smooth integration with new cloud services.

It is true that the wireless industry still needs to face the previous decentralization of the air interface to ensure backward compatibility of future mobile devices. However, the consensus expressed by LTE means that the wireless industry can spend more time developing new applications and services for consumers.

The effects of using a common basic interface are emerging, and wireless technology is now a contributing factor in many areas of business activity, including retail, services, banking, healthcare and the automotive industry.

However, IHS believes that operators still have to solve many technical and business issues. This includes a challenge related to continuous band availability. Operators can only use 10 MHz LTE channels instead of the more ideal and more efficient 20 MHz, and even worse, the available bands in different regions are completely different.

Other issues faced by operators include the establishment of new business models to accommodate the expansion of wireless technology to other industries; the design of LTE equipment that can take advantage of new chipset architectures; and the rapidly changing environment that is caused by all these developments.

Author: Francis Sideco