The latest Mobility Report from Ericsson states that mobile subscriptions are expected to reach 9.3 billion by 2019, and more than 60 per cent of these ? 5.6 billion ? will be for smartphones.
To support the smartphone user experience, WCDMA/HSPA networks are predicted to cover 90 percent of the world?s population by 2019. Moreover, almost two-thirds (65 percent) of the world?s population will be covered by 4G/LTE networks. Currently, smartphones represent 25-30 per cent of all mobile phone subscriptions, yet they account for the majority (55 percent) of mobile phones sold in the third quarter of 2013.
India saw the second highest number of new mobile subscriptions in the third quarter of 2013, following China. There was a net addition of 10 million mobile subscriptions in India, taking the total number of Indian mobile subscriptions to 742 million.
Smartphone traffic will grow by 10 times between 2013 and 2019, reaching 10 exabytes. Video is growing at 55 percent annually, and will represent more than 50 per cent of the mobile data traffic, while social networking and web services will account for around 10 per cent each in 2019.
