Ericsson has published the latest version of its Mobility Report, which shows that the total number of mobile subscriptions is expected to exceed the world’s population next year. The first quarter of 2014 saw mobile subscriptions grow by 7% year-on-year, with 120 million net additions.
The popularity of smartphones is also increasing. In Q1 2014, 65% of all phones sold worldwide were smartphones - and in two years’ time, the total number of smartphone subscriptions around the world is forecast to exceed those for basic feature phones.
Looking ahead to 2019, European smartphone use will increase to 765 million smartphone subscriptions: that’s more than one smartphone for every person in Europe.
Data use will increase as well. Compared to today, smartphone users in 2019 are expected to consume almost four times the amount of mobile data per month - and the number of active cellular M2M devices will increase by between three and four times by 2019.
As a result, mobile data traffic is expected to increase 10-fold between 2013 and 2019.
Rima Qureshi, Senior Vice President and Ericsson's Chief Strategy Officer, said “The growth and the evolution in M2M and the 10-fold growth in mobile data traffic strengthen the emphasis on network performance, handling complexity and maximizing the user experience. This in turn puts even higher requirements across the networks and the operations and business support systems of the future.”