According to a forecast from ABI Research, LTE-capable phones will make up a massively growing segment of the smartphone market in 2015. In 2014, the company estimates that there will be 204 million LTE-capable units shipped; the forecast for 2015 is 676 million. This represents more than triple the number of sales from this year, and the firm estimates that LTE will be the standard for some years to come, with an estimated 1.9 billion handsets to be sold in 2019; by then, that is likely to be the vast majority of the market.

Why the sudden increase? In developing markets like India and China, LTE rollouts are in their infancy and subscribers will be able to take fuller advantage of the technology as the infrastructure continues to roll out during 2015. In developed markets like the US, LTE has become the standard deata connection protocol for most carriers, and most new phones will have to be LTE-capable to take advantage of available features. Another factor is Europe: according to ABI, only 14 percent of Western Europe has an LTE-capable handset, making significant gains there possible in 2015. In addition, many carriers are pushing their subscribers to the LTE standard in order to replace and “recycle” older 2G and 3G data network spectrum that could be used for other purposes.

Finally, not all LTE is the same. ABI notes that LTE-Advanced technology, which is capable (in theory) of 260Mbps download speed, has been rolled out on 20 networks in 14 countries. With the new technologies being rolled out, it makes sense that the carriers will focus their marketing spending on devices that take advantage of their new networks.