This paper brings results about the behavior of sequences of eigenvalues or singular values of integral operators generated by square-integrable kernels on the real m-dimensional unit sphere, m ≥ 2. Under smoothness assumptions on the kernels, given via (infinitely many times) Laplace-Beltrami differentiability, we obtain super-exponential decay rates for the eigenvalues of positive integral operators and for singular values of those which are non-positive. The positive case is shown to be optimal. We also provide a list of parametric families of these kernels, which are of interest for numerical analysis and geostatistical communities.MSC: 45C05 (41A36 42A82 45M05 45P05 47A75)