In September 2020, Omdia provided GSA with the global LTE and 5G user growth as of the second quarter of 2020.

As of the end of the second quarter of 2020, global LTE users have reached 5.55 billion. In the past 12 months, approximately 800 million LTE users have been added globally, an annual increase of 16.7%. LTE users now account for 60.4% of global mobile users. During the second quarter of 2020, global 5G users doubled to at least 137.7 million, accounting for approximately 1.5% of the total global mobile users.

According to the latest data from Omidia, by the end of 2025, the number of global mobile users will reach 10.3 billion. LTE users are expected to reach the peak of the technology market share (63.3% of mobile users) by the end of 2021, and reach the highest number of users (6.07 billion) by the end of 2022.

As customers migrate to 5G, the growth of global LTE users is expected to start to decline slowly from 2023. From the end of 2020 to the end of 2025, the market share of GSM will drop from 15.1% to 5.6%, and the market share of W-CDMA will drop from 19.4% to 11.3%. By the end of 2025, 5G will account for nearly 30% of the global mobile market (3.03 billion users), although LTE will still account for 53.5% of the total global mobile users by then.

The latest statistics released by GSA on September 23 show that as of mid-September 2020, 397 operators in 129 countries/regions are investing in 5G. 124 operators have announced that they have deployed 3GPP-compliant technologies in their real-time networks. Among them, 101 operators from 44 countries/regions have launched one or several 3GPP-compliant 5G services. 94 operators have launched 5G mobile services that comply with 3GPP standards, 37 operators have launched 5G FWA or home broadband services that comply with 3GPP standards, and 9 operators that have announced limited availability or soft start are no longer included in the above data.