Subscription for smartphones and the traffic generated through it are going to rise drastically in years to come. According to a report from telecom vendor Ericsson, smartphone subscription is going to be around 5.6 billion by the end of 2019 from 1.9 billion in 2013. The smartphone data traffic is also going to rise by 10 fold in comparison with the present.
The Ericsson Mobility Report said that to meet the growing demand of mobile data traffic, the mobile network companies are going to cover two thirds of the world population by LTE. Monthly smartphone traffic is going to reach one billion billion bytes (10 exabytes). This is 2.2GB per month per active connection. The surge in such data will be driven mainly because users are going view more videos online, the report said.
In the third quarter, smartphones saw an overwhelming response. A total of 258.4 million smartphones were shipped by various vendors. This set a new record in terms of total number of smartphones shipped in one quarter.
After three years, the number of smartphone subscriptions is expected to surpass the number of basic phones.
The growth in this field is going to be driven by markets like Asia Pacific, Africa and Middle East. Cheap smartphones are the new craze these days in such markets and people will expectedly transition from feature phones to smartphones.
"The rapid pace of smartphone uptake has been phenomenal and is set to continue. It took more than five years to reach the first billion smartphone subscriptions, but it will take less than two to hit the 2 billion mark. Between now and 2019, smartphone subscriptions will triple.
Interestingly, this trend will be driven by "uptake in China and other emerging markets as lower-priced smartphone models become available," said Douglas Gilstrap, senior vice president and head of strategy at Ericsson.
