China is set to overtake America as the largest 4G LTE market this year, said GSMA Intelligence.
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Chinese mobile operators such as China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom are aggressively expanding the LTE coverage in the country. The first commercial 4G network went live in China in late 2013.
China will have 300 million 4G connections by the end of this year.
In 2014, China Mobile had 90 million 4G connections, becoming the largest 4G LTE operator in the global telecom market.
China will overtake America despite the U.S. has presence of 4G telecom operators such as Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint, T-Moble USA, etc.
Europe has 108 4G operators. However, 47 percent of the world’s 4G connections are based in Asia Pacific, concentrated in markets such as South Korea, Japan and China.
In South Korea, two-thirds of the country’s mobile connections are running on 4G. North America has the largest proportion of connections on 4G (44 percent of the total).
GSMA Intelligence said 4G-LTE networks will cover more than a third of the global population by year-end. 4G coverage will be available to 35 per cent of the global population in 2015 against 27 percent in 2014.
By the end of January 2015, the number of live 4G operators stood at 352. The number of 4G connections is more than doubling from 200 million in 2013 to 490 million in 2014. 7 percent of all global mobile connections were running on 4G networks in 2014 against 3 percent in 2013.
GSMA Intelligence forecasts that global 4G connections will grow at more than 30 per cent a year (CAGR) from 2014 to 2020.
In 2015, global 4G connections are forecast to reach 875 million, accounting for 12 percent of total connections. By 2020, 4G is expected to account for more than 30 percent of global connections. 4G networks are expected to cover 63 percent of the global population by this point.
