Samsung expects to double global LTE market share by 2013

CHICAGO--Samsung's telecom equipment group expects to grow its market share in LTE equipment globally from 10 percent to more than 20 percent by 2013. In an interview with FierceBroadbandWireless at the 4G World conference, IP Hong, vice president and head of global marketing for Samsung's telecom group, said that the main appeal of Samsung's Smart LTE product portfolio is that it can reduce operator costs by as much as 48 percent thanks to its ability to offer twice the capacity with fewer base stations. Samsung also claims that its equipment can provide interference cancellation beyond current standards specifications.

Samsung currently has LTE equipment deals with operators in the U.S., Asia and Europe. In the U.S., MetroPCS (NYSE:PCS) is deploying Samsung's LTE equipment and Sprint recently announced that Samsung will be one of three vendors it selected to deploy LTE as part of the company's Network Vision project. Hong said that the company is already deploying Sprint's LTE equipment and, in fact, just started deploying LTE for Sprint in the Chicago market today.

Hong also said that Samsung expects to secure a few more LTE equipment deals with U.S. operators in the future, however he wouldn't reveal whether those operators were Tier 1 carriers or smaller.

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