LTE smartphone shipments crossed one billion units globally in 2016

Smartphone consumption is growing massively on a global scale and Counterpoint’s latest research points out to the same. Global smartphone shipments grew 3 percent annually in 2016 but the fourth quarter of 2016 saw smartphone shipments reaching a record 440 Million units. This translates to an year-on-year growth of 9 percent as thanks to the strong holiday sales.

One of the key findings from the research said that out of the 1512 million units shipped in 2016, 4 out of 5 were LTE or 4G enabled. This is a clear indication that the adoption of 4G around the world has grown and eventually manufacturers will only focus on creating 4G enabled smartphones.

Commenting on the findings, Tarun Pathak, Associate Director at Counterpoint Research said, “2016 was the inflection point for LTE as a technology as it scaled down to lower price points (sub – USD 75). LTE adoption was much faster compared to any other previous cellular technologies as the total LTE smartphone demand crossed a billion units in 2016. China is leading in terms of LTE subscriptions share globally by contributing to almost half of the total worldwide LTE subscriptions. Going forward we estimate LTE to be a dominant technology for mass market adoption with Gigabit LTE to start providing the foundation next year for premium high speed mobile broadband before the 5G rollout takes over by 2022.”

Apple managed to tip Samsung in the last quarter of 2016 by a margin by shipping 78.3 million units and having a market share of 17.8 percent. On the other hand Samsung is said to have shipped 78 million units in the same quarter having a 17.7 percent market share. However, the Korean giant was still the overall leader in smartphone shipments in 2016 by shipping 310.3 million units followed by Apple with 215.2 million. Chinese brands also had a good year with Huawei shipping 139 million units, 92 million for Oppo while China’s Apple Xiaomi shipping 61 million units.