A report out of the Wall Street Journal this morning all but confirms that the next generation iPad, the iPad 3 or HD, will feature LTE connectivity. The inclusion of LTE in the iPad could tilt sales towards Verizon Wireless, which is both the nation’s largest LTE network and currently has significant capacity due to the fact that only about 5% of Verizon customers have LTE-capable smartphones.
AT&T, on the other hand, is currently in the early stages of its LTE rollout, with only a few dozen markets now featuring LTE technology. While AT&T will certainly rapidly build out its network over the next several months, the iPad HD is set to go on sale as early as next week, and will likely push significant volumes in March thanks to improvements in the processing prowess and that sexy Retina HD display. Of course, the success of the iPad will likely lead to more concerns on Verizon’s part, who has recently indicated that their LTE network could reach maximum capacity in select markets as early as 2013.
Previous tablet sales haven’t exactly painted a rosy picture for tablets tied to carrier contracts. In 2011, only about 30% of all tablets sold worldwide were tied to a carrier contract, with tablet users not willing to commit to 2 year data plans in exchange for a subsidized tablet. There is a very obvious reason for this lack of carrier adoption; often these tablets are priced higher than the Wi-Fi only models, coming in around $400-$600 even with the customary subsidies. Generally it’s been the enterprise business professionals who’ve adopted 3G/4G tablets, needing the constant connections these tablets provide to keep their productivity up.
With the most advanced and wide-reaching LTE network in the country, putting it in prime position to dominate the LTE iPad market. That is, of course, only if they can figure out a way to get more people to adopt the LTE model, something they may have a hard time doing when customers only get 2GB of data for $30 per month.
[via The Wall Street Journal]