During today's Financial Results call, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that 36 additional carriers will be providing LTE connectivity for the iPhone and the iPad next week.
"Next week," said Tim Cook, "we're adding 36 more carriers for LTE support. These carriers will be in countries that we are not currently supporting LTE."
While Cook did not name all 36 carriers that would be getting LTE, he did mention that they are in regions like Italy, Denmark, Switzerland, the Philippines, and the Middle East. Currently, 24 carriers offer LTE for the iPhone and the iPad, in countries like the United States, Australia, South Korea, the U.K., Germany, Canada, and Japan.
Apple has been slow to roll out LTE connectivity, leading to complaints over the "4G" in the third generation iPad's name when it was released. Apple later changed it to the iPad Wi-Fi + Cellular in response.
When asked if the slow pace of LTE rollouts has had an impact on iPhone sales, Cook skirted the question, but he did mention the plans to roll out LTE in the aforementioned countries during the next week, and had this to say: "We feel really good about the situation we are in, particularly with these adds next week."
Top Rated Comments
Well New Zealand only has 4 million people, less than half that of Sweden, and our no.1 carrier is beginning work on a 4G LTE network: http://www.telecom.co.nz/mobile/mobile/ournetwork/buildinga4gfuture/ (http://www.telecom.co.nz/mobile/mobile/ournetwork/buildinga4gfuture/)
You can't base LTE support on population count
What are you talking about? Sweden already have 4G (LTE) and was the first country in the world with a commercial 4G network.
The absolute majority lives in southern Sweden.
Are you high or just retarded?
Maybe if you had done your research before opening that big mouth you would know that Sweden was the first country in the world (with Norway) to have LTE...
That Apple doesn't support the bands used in some countries it doesn't mean these countries don't have LTE (moreover... you wish you had the quality of internet Swedish have... and also the price), but hey... no hard feelings.
An initiative like this is no doubt made in cooperation with, or at least with endorsement by, Apple. I think there's no way they would go through this otherwise, due to how popular Android devices already support LTE in Sweden via the 800 MHz band.