Samsung has set out its long-term goal for LTE, saying its target is to be one of the top three global infrastructure vendors in this market in 2013. By 2015 the Korean vendor is targeting a top three spot within the entire mobile infrastructure market, now that it has finally added GSM to its product mix.
It will have its work cut out: the LTE market is already dominated by Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia-Siemens; according to Infonetics Research, Alcatel-Lucent was edging slightly ahead of Ericsson in the LTE equipment segment in Q2 2011.
IP Hong, VP of marketing at Samsung, said during a roundtable at Mobile World Congress that the Korean company now has eight commercial LTE contracts – all outside of Europe to date – and has deployed “tens of thousands of base stations”. He said the vendor has a “double-digit” market share now, and aims to increase that further this year.
He is also confident that Samsung will also be able to achieve its target through organic growth: “We already have the entire product line and can achieve it on our own,” he said. He added that the vendor sees considerable benefits from the fact that it is now one of the few vendors to have both a device and networks division.
Samsung said it had sold 1.7 million devices in Q4 2011 and had 41 percent of the market, making it the market leader in this field.