70% of world’s population using smartphones by 2020: Ericsson

• 80% of all mobile data traffic will come from smartphones
• 26bil connected devices, mobile video traffic to grow 55% per year

BY the year 2020, advanced mobile technology will be commonplace around the globe – smartphone subscriptions will more than double to reach 6.1 billion people; 70% of the world’s population will be using smartphones; and 90% will be covered by mobile broadband networks, according to Ericsson.
 
Citing the latest edition of the Ericsson Mobility Report, published June 3, the company said that growth in mature markets comes from an increasing number of devices per individual.
 
In developing regions, it comes from a swell of new subscribers as smartphones become more affordable; almost 80% of smartphone subscriptions added by end-2020 will be from Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa, it said in a statement.
 
With the continued rise of smartphones comes an accelerated growth in data usage. Smartphone data is predicted to increase tenfold by 2020, when 80% of all mobile data traffic will come from smartphones.

“This immense growth in advanced mobile technology and data usage, driven by a surge in mobile connectivity and smartphone uptake, will makes today’s big data revolution feel like the arrival of a floppy disk,” said Ericsson senior vice president and chief strategy officer Rima Qureshi (pic).
 
“We see the potential for mass-scale transformation, bringing a wealth of opportunities for telecom operators and others to capture new revenue streams.
 
“But it also requires greater focus on cost-efficient delivery and openness to new business models to compete and remain effective,” she added.
 
Connected devices, video
 
An expanding range of applications and business models coupled with falling modem costs are key factors driving the growth of connected devices, Ericsson said.
 
Added to this, new use cases are emerging for both short- and long-range applications, leading to even stronger growth of connected devices moving forward.
 
Ericsson’s forecast, outlined in the report, points to 26 billion connected devices by 2020, confirming we are well on the way to reaching the vision of 50 billion connected devices.
 
Each year until 2020, mobile video traffic will grow by a staggering 55% per year and will constitute around 60% of all mobile data traffic by the end of that period.
 
Growth will be largely driven by shifting user preferences towards video streaming services, and the increasing prevalence of video in online content including news, advertisements and social media.
 
When looking at data consumption in advanced mobile broadband markets, Ericsson’s findings show a significant proportion of traffic is generated by a limited number of subscribers. These heavy data users represent 10% of total subscribers but generate 55% of total data traffic, the company said.
 
Video is dominant among heavy users, who typically watch around one hour of video per day, which is 20 times more than the average user.
 
The Report
 
The Ericsson Mobility Report shares forecast data, analysis and insight into mobile traffic, subscriptions, and consumer behaviour to provide insight into current traffic and market trends in today’s ‘Networked Society.’
 
Ericsson regularly performs traffic measurements in over 100 live networks in all major regions of the world. Detailed measurements are made in a selected number of commercial WCDMA/HSPA and LTE networks with the purpose of discovering different traffic patterns.
 
To accompany the Ericsson Mobility Report, Ericsson has created the Traffic Exploration Tool for creating customised graphs and tables using data from the report. The information can be filtered by region, subscription, technology, traffic, and device type.
 
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