Markets like the US have accommodated LTE handsets for sometime now, but it was only in September that Apple launched their first compatible iPhone. However, despite their late arrival on the scene, the company has already snagged 26.7% of the global LTE device market.
According to TheNextWeb, results of a report assembled by Strategy Analytics show that Apple’s arrival in the LTE device market has sorely upset leading rivals with a longer history in the same space. With the introduction of the iPhone 5 in the market, Samsung’s share of LTE devices made up 40% of the of the total amount of active LTE devices globally, down 10.9% three months earlier.
Meanwhile the act of Apple upsetting the balance also took market share away from two other large Korean manufacturers, LG and Pantech. Samsung’s leading Korean rival LG lost 5.9% dropping down from 15% to 9.1%, whilst Pantech actually gained 0.1% of ground with a 5.8% in the LTE device space.
4G LTE technology as a whole has seen increasing popularity with consumers, with the US, Japan and Korea offering the most advanced and robust LTE networks, whilst newer markets like the UK offering up new opportunities for manufacturers.
Alongside the iPhone 5, recent releases like the Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE, Huawei Ascend P1 LTE, Nokia Lumia 920 and LG Optimus G LTE show an increasingly diverse range of LTE-compatible are becoming available to facilitate the transition from 3G to 4G speeds globally amongst general mobile consumers. Whether Apple’s piece of this pie continues to grow in the next quarter likely remains at the mercy of what leading mobile manufacturers intend to release at CES 2013.
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