Global sales of long-term evolution smartphones will likely triple next year, driven by South Korea’s tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. and its U.S. rival Apple Inc., a report showed Sunday.

The report by research firm Strategy Analytics predicted that about 275 million units of LTE smartphones will be sold worldwide next year, which will be three times larger than this year’s annual sales estimate of 90.9 million units.

The report expected that the U.S., Britain, Japan, China and South Korea will play a major role in expanding the LTE smartphone market. In particular, it cited Samsung Electronics and Apple as handset makers that will lead the market expansion.

SA predicted that Samsung and Apple will continue to dominate the fourth-generation mobile phone market next year as they did in the third-generation market this year thanks to strong demand for their popular handset models, including the Galaxy S3 and iPhone 5.

Currently, Samsung and Apple dominate the global LTE smartphone market. Another SA report showed that Samsung’s market share stood at 40 percent during the third quarter, followed by Apple with 26.7 percent. South Korea’s LG Electronics came next with a 9.1 percent share. (Yonhap News)