The global market for LTE was valued at USD 10.47 billion in 2012 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 78.6% during the forecast period from 2013 to 2019. The market is majorly driven by increased need for higher data rates and greater spectral efficiency. In turn, this need is driven by increased data usage, rapid deployments of smart devices and need for high quality of services on move. In addition, increased adoption of public safety LTE and planned large-scale adoption of LTE by operators in Asia Pacific is expected to boost the market growth further.

Demand for mobile data and broadband services are growing at a fast pace, but operators are facing challenges in attempt to capture this value. There is need for resolution of substantial capacity constraints while conquering profitability issues in the current pricing composition. With huge growth in mobile data demand (including smartphone and mobile broadband), there is substantial need for spectrally efficient technology and shifting business models for monetizing mobile data across the customer base.

LTE market is segmented on the basis of technology, components of LTE environment and services and applications offered over LTE networks. Technology segment includes LTE FDD, TD-LTE and LTE Advanced. The components considered are LTE infrastructure, chipsets, terminal equipments and LTE testing equipments.LTE infrastructure segment accounted for around 34% share in 2012 of the total LTE market. The demand for infrastructure is driven by saturation existing in the 2G and 3G networks and quest for higher data rates. As LTE evolves, the service providers have been looking for data-only networks, carrying voice in packet data form. Further, LTE infrastructure is being installed for upgrading the core networks as well as up gradation of backhauls and base stations for making network systems spectrally efficient and cost effective.

Services and application segments of LTE include browsing, games, M2M and connected devices, m-commerce, mobile cloud services, music, P2P messaging, public safety LTE, TV/video-on-demand and Voice over LTE (VoLTE). One of the key factors driving market growth of VoLTE is increased need for sustained use of voice services along with the data services. It also offers unique advantages of lowering voice infrastructure economics in the long term and promises to improve voice quality.

North America was the largest regional market for LTE as the region has been witnessing increased access to smarter devices demanding faster networks and large scale deployments of public safety LTE. Asia Pacific is expected to surpass North America by 2015, owing to growing demand for high-speed wireless data and increased spending on infrastructure by operators in this region especially, China, India, Korea and Japan. Asia-Pacific has been a major driving momentum behind TD-LTE adoption.

Among network operators (carriers), Verizon Wireless led the LTE market with a market share of 58.1% in 2012 followed by NTT DoCoMo. Other important network operators include AT&T Mobility, China Mobile, Sprint Corp, T-Mobile, Vodafone and SK Telecom. Among LTE network infrastructure vendors, Ericsson lead the LTE market with a market share of 30% in 2012 followed by Huawei.