iPhone Doomed Unless It Goes LTE, Says Swedish Mobile Provider

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It’s hard to think of the iPhone, which ever iPhone is most recent, that is, as anything less than an industry front-runner. Even trying to consider it as first among equals is a bit of a reach. But Sweden’s TeliaSonera, as represented here by Senior Vice President Tommy Ljunggren, seems to think it a distinct possibility unless Apple gets off the dime and puts in LTE capability.

Ljunggren reportedly, in an interview with telecoms.com, put forth a very dim view of Apple’s future unless it adopted LTE technology in its mobile gear, including among other things a near-complete loss of relevance for Apple as a brand without LTE. From the interview:

“If you asked me two years ago I would have said Apple would be very important. But now it will be a bad mistake not to include LTE in the iPhone 5 as otherwise they will really be run over by the others.”

Of course, to be fair, Ljunggren went on to say in said interview that he foresaw even “low-end” smartphones packing LTE by sometime in the 2013-2014 range, despite the fact that he also said he understands that, right now, LTE chips eat power like nobody’s business.

What’s particularly noteworthy about this shot of doom-and-gloom is that, not so long ago, there was word that the reason we didn’t see an iPhone 5 this year was that the iPhone 5 was set to be an LTE device, but a full LTE network in the United States, arguably Apple’s primary market, wasn’t set to be in place until at the earliest mid-2012. Verizon’s is still getting into place, though expanding with great rapidity, and Sprint looks to have theirs hitting around 90 percent of the country by 2013. So Ljunggren’s predictions seem a mite half-baked here, as there’s every indication that Apple will have LTE devices probably by the end of 2012.

But what do you guys think here? Is Ljunggren jumping to conclusions? Does he have a point? If he does, does it really even matter as Apple will probably add LTE in fairly rapid fashion anyway? No matter what you think about this one, we want to hear about it, so head on down to the comments section and tell us what you think!