Infonetics forecasts 165M worldwide LTE subs by 2014

Infonetics forecasts the worldwide LTE infrastructure market to grow approximately 10 times from 2010 to 2014, to $11.5 billion. The firm, citing tremendous growth coming from smartphones and tablets, also increased its subscriber forecast from previous estimations. It anticipates close to 165 million worldwide LTE subscribers by 2014.

As part of its predictions, Infonetics said HSPA+ will continue to grow steadily as well. "Current networks won't disappear anytime soon, and early LTE networks will only carry data while voice services will fall back to good-old circuit switch networks before LTE deployments start to ramp up," said Infonetics analyst Stephane Teral . "We're still at a very early stage for LTE with HSPA/HSPA+ rollouts, which are poised to enjoy a long tail."

"The current mobile broadband market is largely driven by embedded devices and smartphones, with injections of growth coming from new touch screen form factors, such as the tablet, notably the Apple iPad, and e-readers like the Amazon Kindle," said Richard Webb, directing analyst of the market research firm's Mobile Devices practice. "As LTE rolls out, these trends will continue, with device competition intensifying around embedded devices and high-end smartphones."

For more:
- see this TMCnet article 

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