China overtook North America in 2014 to become the world’s largest market for LTE SIM card shipments.
Worldwide LTE SIM volumes rocketed 330% to 540 million last year, according to statistics published by the SIMalliance this week. Greater China accounted for 270 million of the total, compared to 138 million in North America.
The growth was attributed to the efforts by Chinese operators to acquire millions of LTE subscribers and the aggressive expansion of 4G networks in the country.
Indeed, in 2015, China is expected to overtake the U.S. to become the world’s largest 4G market in terms of subscribers too. At the end of 2014, the U.S. was the largest with 148 million. However, GSMA Intelligence expects China to comfortably overtake the U.S. and finish 2015 with 300 million LTE subscribers.
If local press reports are to be believed, that estimate might prove conservative.
Meanwhile, LTE SIM shipments in Brazil were 62 million, followed by Japan/Korea at 31 million. 18 million LTE SIMs were shipped in Western Europe.
"Despite regulatory, economic and market maturity challenges continually faced by individual countries, the SIM industry is thriving," declared SIMalliance chairman Hervé Pierre, in a statement on Tuesday.
Overall, 4.7 billion SIM cards were shipped by SIMalliance members in 2014; the industry body represents approximately 90% of the global SIM card market. That figure represents an 11% increase on SIM shipments in 2013.
Global shipments of SIM cards enabled with near-field communications (NFC) also re corded strong growth, with volumes surging 69% to 132 million in 2014.
"Last year’s growth in NFC-enabled SIM shipments shows that demand is strong in this market," said Pierre. "With the launch of Apple Pay, 2014 was a progressive year for the entire NFC ecosystem and all signs indicate that the NFC market will enjoy continued growth throughout 2015 and beyond."
