#4 M&E Research : Video take Centre stage in Future for Mobile Networks

Video is becoming ubiquitous and has been driving much of the internet traffic, come to mobile network traffic and the landscape is no different.  Accordingly to Ericsson’s Mobility Report 2013, video traffic is growing at 60% annually and Video  is expected to account for almost half of total global mobile network traffic.

Mobile Data Traffic Distribution 2012-2018

The growth resonates with the changing landscape in mobile devices with increasing number and variant of devices (smartphones, tablets, ebook readers, mobilePCs, connected wearable devices etc.) coming in the market. Similarly the capability of mobile devices is increasing by becoming faster, more resourceful, having higher resolution and computational power, larger screen sizes which is getting complemented with exponential growth in supported applications, services and much faster networks. Video is the fastest growing vertical in mobile traffic and currently accounts for just over 30% of mobile data traffic. Ericsson forecasts it to rise to 46% by 2018, or more than that if encrypted data and file sharing are included meanwhile share of web browsing traffic will fall from 14% to 10%

Key findings and forecasts include

• Global mobile subscriptions stand at 6.4 billion with actual number of subscribers is around 4.5 billion. The subscription is
  

  LTE Population Coverage

  expected to touch 9.1 billion by 2o18.

• LTE will cover approximately 60 percent of the world’s population in 2018.
• GSM/EDGE technology will be dominant in developing countries while  giving way to LTE over time. Meanwhile WCDMA are getting upgraded to HSPA
• Total global smartphone subscriptions which hit the 1.2 billion mark in 2012, is expected to reach 4.5 billion by the end of 2018
• Data traffic volumes which doubled between Q1 2012 and Q1 2013, and are expected to grow 12-fold by 2018
• Monthly mobile data usage per smartphone to rise from 450MB in 2012 to 2,000MB by 2018 , similarly data usage on tablets  to rise from 600MB in 2012 to 3,100MB in 2018

Mobility Growth Forecast Areas (2012-2018)