Nearly 350 million smartphones shipped in 2015 supported LTE Carrier Aggregation (CA), representing 23% of total smartphone shipments for the year, according to ABI Research. As the LTE market continues to migrate toward LTE-Advanced, notably LTE CA, ABI forecasts that 61% of smartphones shipped in 2020 to incorporate LTE CA across various categories of basebands.
According to ABI Research, smartphones shipped in 2020 that support LTE CA categories 9 and 10, with downlink speeds of up to 450 Mbps, will represent the majority of the market and hold 35% share. Smartphones supporting category 11 or higher, and thereby capable of supporting speeds between 5Gbps and 1Gbps, are expected to gain significant share over the next few years and be on track to achieve 21% of the market by 2020.
Malik Saadi, Managing Director and Vice President of ABI Research
Qualcomm, Samsung, and Huawei's HiSilicon are all aggressively pushing LTE CA, making it extremely difficult for rivals to compete in the LTE baseband business. These three players managed to monopolize the market segment with a collective market share of 97% in 2015, leaving other suppliers to fight for the remaining 3%.
