Ericsson has released its quarterly report on mobility trends for the quarter ended September 2015. The report highlights the increase in mobile subscriptions across all regions, with mobile broadband growing at a brisk pace. Long term evolution (LTE) subscriptions are growing significantly as customers get used to high speed data services, particularly video. The concept of internet of things (IoT) will gain traction as the number of connected devices grows, driven by a range of applications and business models, and supported by falling modem costs.
A look at the highlights of the report…
Mobile subscriptions
During the third quarter of calendar year 2015, the total number of mobile subscriptions reached 7.3 billion, registering 87 million new subscriptions. India witnessed the maximum net subscriber additions during the quarter (over 13 million), followed by China (over 7 million), the US (over 6 million), Myanmar (over 5 million) and Nigeria (over 4 million). Smartphones accounted for close to 75 per cent of all mobile phones sold in the third quarter of 2015, as compared to around 70 per cent during the corresponding quarter in 2014.
As far as mobile broadband subscriptions are concerned, these increased by around 160 million in the third quarter of 2015. The segment witnessed a year-on-year growth of around 25 per cent globally. By 2021, smartphones will make up the majority of mobile broadband devices and subscriptions are expected to almost double. This will be driven by greater affordability in developing markets such as the Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. Mobile broadband subscriptions will reach 7.7 billion globally by 2021.
Meanwhile, LTE subscriptions have also exhibited a strong growth trend, with the total base reaching around 850 million globally as of end-September 2015. About 120 million LTE subscribers have been added during the third quarter of 2015. LTE uptake is being driven by the demand for enhanced user experience and higher network speeds. The uptake is being fuelled by an attractive LTE device ecosystem and around 3,700 LTE user devices have been launched. By 2021, these will account for the largest share of all subscriptions, totalling 4.1 billion.
Mobile traffic
During the past five years, the industry has witnessed strong growth in data traffic while voice traffic has grown at a mid-single-digit rate annually. This data traffic growth is being driven both by rising smartphone subscriptions and a continuous increase in the average data volume per subscription, mainly owing to increased viewing of video content. Data traffic grew around 65 per cent year on year between the third quarter of 2014 and 2015. Going forward, the total mobile data traffic is expected to rise at a compound annual growth rate of around 45 per cent. Further, the Asia-Pacific region will generate 40 per cent of the total smartphone traffic by end-2021 and account for the largest share of the total smartphone traffic. A rapid increase in subscriptions will fuel this growth. China alone will add 260 million mobile subscriptions by 2021.
Mobile video traffic is becoming dominant among users. In fact, in the majority of mobile networks at present, 50-70 per cent of video traffic is from YouTube. This traffic is forecast to grow by around 55 per cent annually through 2021, when it will account for around 70 per cent of all mobile data traffic. Further, the relative share of traffic generated by social networking is expected to decline from 15 per cent in 2015 to 10 per cent by 2021, mainly owing to stronger growth in the video category. Consumer preferences are shifting towards video and application-based mobile usage relative to web browsing.
Internet of things
Coverage for cellular machine-type communication will be expanded as a result of new cellular network functionality, supporting IoT applications in more remote areas, as well as in buildings and underground locations.
Historically, mobile phones have been the largest category of connected devices. There will be around 400 million machine-to-machine (M2M) and consumer electronic devices with cellular subscriptions by end-2015. M2M is expected to grow at an annual growth rate of 25 per cent up to 2021, driven by new users. In total, connected devices are expected to reach around 28 billion globally by 2021, of which more than 15 billion will be connected M2M and consumer electronic devices.
Further, the number of cellular connected devices is expected to grow substantially, reaching 1.5 billion by 2021. The increase will be driven by new users of cellular M2M services. Moreover, many devices will be connected through capillary networks. This will leverage the ubiquity, security and management of cellular networks. Currently, around 70 per cent of cellular M2M modules are GSM-only. Additional functionality will allow existing networks to support different device categories and enable the prioritisation of devices accessing the network.
