Apple adds 36 more carriers to its 4G family

[RaduTyrsina]

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Apple's Q1 2013 conference call finally took place, therefore giving us the chance to learn about some of the giant’s plans for the near future. One of the most notable things announced by Tim Cook was that the company plans to expand its LTE 4G range by adding support for the iPhone 5 boasting these qualities within 36 new networks.

So far, the LTE functionality has been spread across only a handful of countries like U.S., Canada, the U.K., Korea, Germany and Japan amongst others. For some reason, the LTE technology advanced slower than many anticipated in the first place.

That’s probably because Apple doesn’t just give the green light to any carrier. First off, the company needs to certify those carriers itself. However, it seems that Cupertino has managed to negotiate some extra deals and starting next week, countries like Finland, Switzerland or the Philippines will be jumping on the LTE bandwagon. Cook specifically highlighted the carriers in the following countries:

“Italy, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland, Philippines, and also several middle eastern countries. If you look at the total of all of these, the incremental subscribers in these countries is 300 million."

So far, Verizon Wireless is the largest LTE carrier worldwide, with 257 million subscribers per total, so, the 300 million forecasted by Cook, represent just 10% more than what Verizon is boasting. Verizon recently posted numbers that showcase that the company has sold 9.8 million smartphones in the holiday quarter and out of those, 6.2 million where iPhones.

Cook finished his speech by stating that the company “feels really good about the situation we are in, particularly with these adds next week.”

Source: AppleInsider