Asia Pacific Will Have 120 Million LTE Connections in 2015

There will be nearly 120 million LTE connections in the Asia-Pacific region, driven by four major markets — China, Japan, South Korea and Indonesia — according to research group Wireless Intelligence, which released a new study earlier this morning. The race begins with the December 2010 launch of Xi, a new LTE service from Japanese mobile giant NTT DoCoMo. Here are some findings from the Wireless Intelligence research study:

• 20 percent of the Japanese mobile market will have migrated to LTE networks by 2015.
• China will have 57.9 million LTE connections by 2015.
• In South Korea, 17 percent of mobile users will be on LTE networks by 2015.
• Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Taiwan and the Philippines will account for a combined 11 percent of total LTE connections in 2015.
• SingTel is currently trialing LTE in four markets: Singapore, Australia (Optus), Indonesia (Telkomsel) and the Philippines (Globe Telecom) and developing a regionally compatible LTE network.

In comparison to these countries, India — the second largest mobile market in the world — is only now getting ready to roll out 3G networks at scale. Juniper Research predicts Indian subcontinent data revenues will increase from $4 billion in 2010 to $10 billion in 2015. The Indian subcontinent mobile user base is expected to rise from 814 million in 2010 to nearly 1.3 billion in 2015.

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