Korean manufacturer Samsung has announced that it has struck a deal with KDDI, Japan’s second largest operator, to supply equipment with a view to launching commercial LTE services in 2012.

Samsung and KDDI already have an existing relationship, with the former providing the Japanese operator with equipment for its CDMA 1xEVDO roll-out in 2006.  Since 2008, Samsung has also provided Wimax kit to UQ Communications, a local KDDI affiliate.

“As a long-term partner of KDDI, we’re very pleased to support them in establishing a new chapter of mobile communication in Japan,” Youngky Kim, Samsung’s executive vice president and general manager of Telecommunication Systems Business said in a statement.

The Korean vendor is looking to restablish itself in the telecoms infrastructure business and this will be seen as a significant win for the company. Samsung said that it aims to offer the a solution that will be optimized for providing service in densely populated urban areas, while also improving signal quality in weaker-signal locations.

At the recent LTE World Summit in Amsterdam, Samsung announced that it would be creating a new European division to strengthen its network infrastructure play in the west and infrastructure wins in other areas of the world will help its cause.

KDDI had just shy of 31 million subscribers in Japan as of the end of March 2011, second overall behind NTT Docomo’s 58 million, according to Informa WCIS statistics.