According to Strategy Analytics Long Term Evolution (LTE) connections will increase nine-fold in 2012 to reach 90 million. The LTE technology uptake will mainly be supported by increasing adoption of  LTE smartphones in countries such as United States, South Korea and Japan. 

The study also reports that the LTE technology will exceed one billion connections by early 2017. As a future technology LTE has overwhelming support by global operators as their 4G upgrade path and offers improved cost efficiency for mobile data services. According to Strategy LTE will account for 15 per cent of all mobile connections in 2017. 

As per the market research in terms of technology adoption and growth GSM took 12 years to reach one billion connections and Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) will take nearly 11 years, while LTE will take just over seven year. 

Currently North America dominates the LTE market with 10.8 million LTE subscriptions, which is more than two-thirds of the global subscriber base as of March 2012. 

The U.S. has about 10.5 million LTE connections, while Canada contributes nearly 300,000 connections as of the first quarter 2012.