Sales of LTE smartphones likely to triple next year

Global sales of long-term evolution (LTE) smartphones will likely triple next year, driven by Korea’s tech giant Samsung Electronics and its U.S. rival Apple, a report showed yesterday.

The report by research firm Strategy Analytics (SA) predicted that about 275 million units of LTE smartphones will be sold worldwide next year, which will be three times larger than this year’s annual sales estimate of 90.9 million units.

The report expected that the U.S., Britain, Japan, China and Korea will play a major role in expanding the LTE smartphone market.

In particular, it cited Samsung Electronics and Apple as handset makers that will lead the market expansion.

SA predicted that Samsung and Apple will continue to dominate the fourth-generation mobile phone market next year as they did in the third-generation market this year thanks to strong demand for their popular handset models, including the Galaxy S3 and iPhone 5.

Yonhap