Digital Lifescapes

4G LTE has been the focus of yet another comprehensive global market study. ABI Research has been actively tracking the LTE market, assessing operator commitments -- both current and future. Out of 470 LTE commitments tracked, 193 have gone commercial. Over the next 2 years, ABI anticipates another 123 network commitments to go commercial. Additionally, ABI is currently tracking 69 LTE-TDD commitments. “By 2018, LTE deployments should deliver population coverage of 57 percent (4.2 billion) and 31 percent (2.3 billion) in legacy WCDMA and CDMA2000 markets respectively" said Jake Saunders, vice president at ABI Research . Significantly, LTE-TDD coverage should achieve 49 percent population coverage by the end of the five year period. These coverage targets will be driven by macro-cells and small cells. By 2018, the number of LTE macro-cell base stations will reach 2.43 million -- to achieve the population coverage targets. Small cells are an integral part of the LTE operat...

According to the latest market study by ABI Research , the global mobile phone services industry concluded 2010 with 5.5 billion subscriptions. The Asia-Pacific region accounted for 53 percent (2.9 billion) of that total. One-third of this can be attributed to the huge 2G market in India -- another one-third to China. As of December 2010, China had 860 million subscribers, although 3G subscriptions accounted for fewer than 50 million, or roughly 5.5 percent of the total. "While there are wide differentials in disposable income, it is still surprising how slow China's 3G rate of growth has been," said ABI Research practice director Neil Strother. China's literacy rates are high, familiarity with the Internet is also high through PC use in extended families as well as ubiquitous Internet cafes. And yet, 3G adoption has been muted. At the end of 2010, China Mobile's TD-SCDMA subscriber base stood at more than 20 million, China Unicom’s WCDMA had 14 million ...