“At the end of 2020 there will be 9.5 billion mobile subscriptions, and mobile broadband is the part that is growing the most,” said Patrik Cerwall, executive editor of the Ericsson Mobility Report. “By 2020 90% of the world’s population over six years old will have a phone. I think that is astonishing. It really talks about the connected world where everyone will have a connection one way or another.”

Africa, India, and Asia Pacific lead in new mobile subscriptions.
(Image: Ericsson)

Ericsson cited 6.8 billion mobile subscriptions globally as of the third quarter of 2014, the majority of which are in the Asia-Pacific region. Emerging markets such as Africa and India showed the most new mobile subscriptions during the same period. Cerwall said an additional 800 million smartphone subscriptions will come online by the end of the year.

“When the smartphone came to life in 2007 it took five years to reach first billion smartphone [subscriptions]. The second billion took almost two years. By 2014 it’s a dramatic change… the pace of change has never been so fast,” Cerwall said.

In addition to early adopters buying additional devices, basic mobile device users in markets migrating from 2G to 3G and 4G will bump up subscription numbers. Smartphones are on track to outnumber basic mobile phones by 2016, accounting for 65% to 70% of all mobile phones sold during the third quarter of this year alone.

“If smartphones go up like that, it’ll also have an impact on traffic. We’ve already seen 60% growth from a year ago. Traffic generated from smartphones is about two times that of other mobile devices,” Cerwall said, adding that smartphones will account for 30 exabytes of mobile traffic per month in 2020.

Currently, the average mobile subscription uses 900 megabytes per month, and Ericsson’s report expects that number to increase to 3.5 gigabytes by 2020. The report also found differences in data use by region, with users in the US averaging 1.6 gigabytes while China averaged 300 megabytes.

Approximately 45% of this data usage is from video, a number Cerwall expects to increase to 55% by 2020. He cited South Korea, where commuters often watch a video on multiple devices as they move from home, to subway, to work.

“In South Korea, one third of all people are doing this ‘place shifting’ over 4G networks. We change our behavior when networks become better,” he said.

Although a majority of the world operates on GSM and HPSA, with only 20% covered by LTE, Cerwall said he expects LTE coverage to increase 70% to 3.5 billion subscriptions by 2020. 3G networks will also see a big expansion in the next six years, covering 90% of the world.

The report indicates that 85% of mobile subscriptions in the Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa will be 3G or 4G by 2020. Between 75% and 80% of North America and Western Europe are expected to be using LTE by the same time period.

Ericsson research found great differences in networks by region.
(Image: Ericsson)

“If we are in the middle of or starting to move toward a networked society, 5G is all about embracing that,” Cerwall said, noting a pickup in the technology by 2020. “It will come with a lot of new capabilities, with new use cases. We’ll be able to do more of the same in terms of downloads — 10 Gbps downloads and latency less than 1 millisecond.”

Ericsson sees M2M benefiting greatly from the technology in the form of critical machine applications and remote control capabilities. Having sufficient spectrum will be fundamental for these advanced cellular networks.

“It’s very much about app coverage. The coverage area of voice is not the same as coverage area of video,” Cervall said. “Operators need to focus on what type of coverage they need for certain apps.”

Ericsson expects much of the increase in data to come from Asia and North America, where 99% of US households have at least three Internet connected devices. In Mexico, however, voice remains the biggest share of the mobile market. Operators in that country should prepare for a six-fold increase in data use by 2020, owing to a growing middle class and the availability of lower priced devices.

— Jessica Lipsky, Associate Editor, EE Times

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