After showcasing its L series range at a media event in Fourways, LG Electronics (LG) announced that it has managed to reach a new global sales milestone of five million units for its LTE (4G) enabled smartphones.

The Korean firm’s LTE equipped smartphones are proving to be popular, with the four million milestone being crossed mid-way through July, meaning that LG sold an additional one million LTE smartphones during July. According to the company this equates to one device being sold about every two and a half seconds.

LG released the first LTE smartphone dubbed the Revolution by LG in the US during May 2011 and went on to expand its LTE target markets via its global LTE smartphones. The company said that the range is currently made up of more than ten LTE smartphones, available in markets where 4G connectivity is already offered such as its own backyard of Korea, the US, Japan as well as select countries within Europe and Asia.

LG’s most popular 4G-enabled smartphone is the Optimus LTE which has accumulated sales of over two million, whilst the Galaxy Note rival, the LG Optimus Vu, has sold more than 500 000 units since March 2012.

The firm also noted that the release of the mobile industry’s first LTE smartphone sporting a whopping 2 GB of RAM, the Optimus LTE II, took place during May 2012 and led to this device crossing the half a million unit sales mark in the first 70 days of its availability.

“Sales of global LTE smartphones are expected to increase ten-fold this year from last year,” said Dr. Jong-seok Park, president and CEO of LG mobile communications company. “With that in mind, we are planning to introduce an even more impressive LTE line-up in the next several months second to none.”

In related news, market research firm Gartner recently announced its latest figures surrounding global mobile phone sales for Q2 2012, with LG coming in fifth place in terms of mobile vendors. According to Gartner the Korean firm sold over 14.345 million handsets during Q2 giving it a 3.4% share of the market, which is down from 24.42 million devices and a 5.7% market share achieved in Q2 2011.