South Korean operator SK Telecom said it is on track to beat its target of 6 million LTE subscribers by the end of 2012, having signed-up 2.4 million customers for the technology by April.

The company said that it is “witnessing an accelerated speed of LTE subscriber growth,” widening the gap over its customers. It noted that it expects its “LTE market leadership and robust subscriber growth to result in improved earnings in the mid-to-long term.” Moreover, it claimed that after launching LTE smartphones in September 2011, it surpassed the one million LTE subscriber mark at the end of January 2012, a milestone that made it the fastest growing LTE operator.

The country’s largest mobile operator reported a consolidated net income of KRW323 billion (US$286.3 million), down 39.8 percent from KRW537 billion, on revenue of KRW3.99 trillion, up 2 percent from KRW3.91 trillion.

Mobile service revenue was KRW2.62 trillion, down slightly from KRW2.68 trillion.

It said that strong wireless internet revenue growth, driven by its growing smartphone user base, and “robust” sales from subsidiaries including the SK Planet value added services business, were “somewhat offset” by the impact of mobile tariff cuts which took place since October 2011.

It also noted “expanded network investment carried out in response to explosive growth of data traffic.”

The company ended the period with 26.6 million subscribers, up from 26 million year-on-year.

Looking forward, alongside growth driven by LTE, SK Telecom said that it is “also working to enter global markets by accelerating the growth of its B2B and healthcare business, and strengthening SK Planet’s core platform business including 11th Street, T Store and T Map.”