NETMANIAS ONE-SHOT | LTE Subscribers in Korea UPDATE | May 1, 2014

LTE subscribers: As of April, 2014, the total number of mobile subscribers in Korea hit 55.2 million.
This indicates that Korea has a penetration rate of 109.7%, considering its population, 50.3 million.
Korea has 31.2 million LTE subscribers, which account for 56.6% of the total mobile subscribers.

Mobile data usage in Korea [PB/Month]: As of the end of March 2014, the LTE traffic reached 66.6 PB, which is 6.9 times higher than 3G traffic. Monthly LTE Traffic grew By 164% from 40.5 PB to 66.6 PB over the last one year. 4G smartphone, 3G smartphone and 2G/3G feature phone users generate 2.263 GB, 1.13 GB and 3 MB of traffic on average per month.

Mobile subscribers - Split per device type: As of the end of April 2014, 38.6M subscribers, which is 69.6% of the total 55.2M mobile subscribers, are smartphone users.

LTE subscribers growth by operator: SK Telecom has 14.8M LTE subscribers, which account for 47% of the total LTE subscribers in Korea.

LTE subscription rate: South Korea’s top 3 operators have LTE subscription rates that are higher than any of its global competitors who launched the same service before them, especially LG U+ with the seemingly unbeatable 68.8% as of the end of March 2014.