In its latest Ericsson Mobility Report, Ericsson predicts that 70% of the world’s population will own a smartphone by 2020. Smartphone subscriptions will more than double, to 6.1 billion. 80% of new subscriptions will come from emerging regions: APAC and MEA.
Ericsson’s report (http://tinyurl.com/pk9y9n7) is an update on global mobile trends. Data shows that mature market growth will come from the rising number of devices owned by each individual. Developing regions, though, will be boosted by new subscribers as smartphones become more affordable.
Smartphone data use is forecast to rise ten-fold by 2020. At this point, smartphone will represent 80% of all data traffic. Average monthly data usage per smartphone in North America will rise from 2.4GB today to 14GB. Mobile video traffic will also grow, by 55% YoY; it will represent 60% of mobile data traffic by the end of the forecast period.
By 2020, Ericsson also predicts that 90% of the world’s population will be covered by mobile broadband networks.
