North America, Japan and Europe to lead 4G deployments, RCRresearch reports

North America will dominate 4G deployments for the next few years as Europe concentrates on HSPA+ rollouts and most emerging markets focus on 2G and 3G voice services, according to new research from RCRresearch.
The report, “Worldwide 4G Market Forecast, 2010-2014,” explores 4G data adoption by regions, technologies and operators. Authored by iGR Research, the report gives the early lead in 4G to subscriber numbers North America, but predicts European 4G subscribers will outpace their North American counterparts by 2014. Overall, 4G subscribership will grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 122% through 2014, led by WiMAX subscribers but then overtaken by LTE subscribers. In 2014, LTE subscribers will represent 84% of the 4G market.
“North America will maintain its lead in worldwide WiMAX subscriber share until 2014, when it will be overtaken by Japan. The Asia/Pacific region will experience slight, but steady growth over the forecast period and will have the third largest share of WiMAX subscribers in 2014. Europe will be the only region to see its WiMAX subscriber base shrink.” North America, Europe and Japan also will be leaders in LTE deployments through 2014, the report predicts.
“One key advantage of a 4G network is the advanced mobile data services it can offer. Thus, profiting from a 4G network requires a significant mobile data market to consumer these mobile data services. But for regions of the world that have only recently acquired 3G services – let alone 2G services – mobile data is not part of the consumers’ daily lives.
“In those developing regions, mobile data is largely a niche product for early adopters. The same could be said of many developed markets of course, but in those regions, per capita income tends to be higher – along with wireless penetration, smartphone penetration, postpaid data plan use, etc. All of these factors, and others, tend to correlate with higher mobile data use,” according to the report.
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