Anticipating more mobile phone service providers will choose LTE for their 4G networks, ABI Research predicted in a new study that more than 32 million subscribers will be using the high-speed wireless technology by 2013.

The market research firm said it doesn't expect any substantial number of users to sign up for commercial LTE service before 2010. Major U.S. providers including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and Alltel have already committed to deploying LTE. Sprint Nextel is centering its 4G effort on WiMax, although it could also utilize LTE.

In its "Long Term Evolution (LTE)" study, ABI forecast that Asia-Pacific countries will record the largest regional share of LTE.

"ABI Research anticipates about 12 million Asia-Pacific LTE network subscribers in 2013," said senior analyst Nadine Manjaro in a statement. "The remainder will be split about 60-40% between Western Europe and North America."

As for China, Manjaro said it is possible Chinese service providers could leapfrog 3G and go directly to LTE.

"Although China's own TD-SCDMA 3G technology will be deployed on a small scale during the Olympics, I can't see operators spending billions to implement that or any other 3G technology if they will just have to upgrade within a year or two," Manjaro said.

She noted that LTE commitments by Japanese providers NTT DoCoMo and KDDI will also help swell the technology's adoption numbers.

ABI said the equipment food chain of LTE will see test equipment vendors profiting initially from the rollout of the 4G technology to be followed close on its heels by companies providing network infrastructure gear.