The relative share of traffic generated by web browsing will have declined by 2020 as a result of stronger growth in categories such as video and social networking. According to the latest Mobility Report of phone manufacturer Ericsson, the share of total mobile traffic by video will increase from 45% now to 55% in 2020. Social networking will stay stable at 15%, while web browsing will decrease from 10% now to 5% in 2020. Consumer preferences are shifting towards more video and app-based mobile use relative to web browsing, says Ericsson.
The number of smartphone subscriptions in the world will more than double in the coming six years. There will be at least 6.1 billion smartphone subscriptions globally, compared to 2,7 billion now. By 2020 90% of the world’s population will own a smartphone, according to the study by Ericsson.
This spectacular growth of the number of smartphone users will mostly come from countries like India and China. In India for instance, 18 million people took a new mobile subscription in the third quarter of 2014 alone. In China that number was 12 million. Indonesia, Russia and the USA follow with respectively 5, 4 and again 4 million new subscriptions.
Especially video is driving the enormous growth of mobile data traffic. Ericsson expects that data traffic in Asia will grow bij a factor of nine in the coming six years. In Western Europe this multiplier will be 8 and in the US 6.
You can download the complete report here (pdf).
Photo: © Hollandse Hoogte
