Korean suppliers leading LTE device market

BY, BP TIWARI
Last year we heard lot of noise from LTE Infrastructure suppliers especially Nokia, Ericson, Huawei, Alactel and NEC boosting their engagements with world biggest telcos.

Earlier I have reported that in Japan DoCoMo and softbank will use 1.5 GHz and KDDI will use 1.5 GHz + 800 MHz and eMobile will use 1.7 GHz for their LTE Deployments. NTT DoCoMo plans commercial LTE launch in December 2010. The initial focus is targeted at PC usage and will be extended to dual-mode 3G/LTE handsets in 2011. By 2014 NTT DoCoMo plans to provide LTE service to 50% of the population from around 20,000 base stations at a cost of between ¥300bn and ¥400bn ($3.2bn to $4.2bn). eMobile has indicated September 2010 LTE launch.

LG electronics is in the race to lead the mobile devices front of LTE .The company also plans to demonstrate a “handover technology” that allows operators to link LTE networks with their existing CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) networks, it said. In bid to gain bigger amount of share in Verizon’s network the supplier has already secured US FCC approval in two models.

In a similar move to gain biggest share in Japanese market ( especially DoCoMo) the Korean supplier has announced that its LD100 data modem has become the first LTE device to receive Telecom Engineering Center (TELEC) certification, clearing the way for the modem to be used in Japan.

During CES, 2010 LG also announced successful live handover between LTE and EV-DO carriers with Alcatel Lucent. LG also achieved major benchmark by completing successful interoperability with Nokia Siemens Networks to achieve downlink data transfer rate of 100 Mbps, the maximum speed for a Class 3 LTE terminal.

The other Korean giant SAMSUNG who has more than 20% of worldwide market share in mobile phones is also aggressively pushing their LTE strategies. The Korean giant has completed live trials in Teliasonera and secured a contract with TeliaSonera to provide Long Term Evolution (LTE) devices. Devices will be commercially available in Sweden and Norway markets. The Samsung LTE device (Model name: GT-B3710) is expected to be the world’s first LTE device. This device is a USB stick that can be connected to a laptop computer, or other portable devices. The USB stick incorporates Samsung’s in-house developed LTE modem chip, branded Kalmia, and supports 2.6GHz band for LTE service.

To support Japanese(DoCoMo) deployment , In October 2009, NEC, NTT DOCOMO, Panasonic Mobile Communications Co., Ltd. and Fujitsu Limited announced the completion of joint development of an LTE-PF chipset engineering sample. Performance assessment results and development updates on these technologies will be on display at MWC.

We have yet to here from Chinese supplier especially Huawei and ZTE.