India beats China in addition of mobile subscriptions

BANGALORE, INDIA: The latest edition of the Ericsson Mobility Report, reveals that proliferation of mobile technology continues at a rapid pace. 90 percent of the world’s population over six years old is predicted to have a mobile phone by 2020 leading to increased mobile subscriptions. Furthermore, by 2020, smartphone subscriptions are forecast to top 6.1 billion.

Fastest growth for new mobile subscriptions was found in India and China, with 18 million and 12 million net additions, respectively, in Q3 2014.

Rima Qureshi, senior vice president, chief strategy officer and Head of M&A, Ericsson, said: “The falling cost of handsets, coupled with improved usability and increasing network coverage, is making mobile technology a global phenomenon that will soon be available to the vast majority of the world’s population, regardless of age or location.”

Smartphone penetration, 800 million new subscriptions in 2014: Smartphone growth continues as 65-70 percent of all phones sold in the third quarter of 2014 were smartphones, compared to 55 percent in the same quarter for 2013. Smartphones currently account for just 37 percent of all mobile phone subscriptions, meaning that many users have yet to make the switch to the more feature-rich, internet-friendly option.

The report predicts a strong uptake in the coming years as the number rises from 2.7 billion smartphone subscriptions today to the forecasted 6.1 billion in 2020.

Video: It is the largest and fastest growing segment of mobile data traffic. It continues to dominate mobile networks in 4G-dominated networks and currently constitutes 45-55 percent of mobile traffic. It is largely driven by increased usage of video streaming and improvements in the mobile video experience.

Video is increasingly appearing as part of other online applications such as news and adverts, and on social media platforms. At the same time, growth in video streaming is being driven by access to over-the-top (OTT) services and content, such as those provided by YouTube.

In terms of future outlook, Ericsson estimates that mobile video traffic will increase tenfold by 2020, ultimately constituting around 55 percent of all mobile data traffic in 2020.

5G subscriptions on the horizon: 5G is expected to be commercially deployed in 2020, and the technology is predicted to have a faster uptake than 4G LTE, just as 4G had a faster uptake than 3G. The difference here is that, in addition to new radio technologies, 5G will also encompass evolved versions of existing radio access (such as 3G and 4G), cloud, and core technologies for the thousands of new ways that mobile technology will be used. 5G growth will be driven to a large extent by new use cases, especially in machine-type communications.