2014-06-09

According to Ericsson Mobility Report June 2014, the total mobile subscriptions in Q1 2014 were around 6.8 billion. This included the addition of 120 million new subscriptions during the first quarter. Global mobile subscriptions have continued to grow 7 percent year-on-year and 2 percent quarter-on-quarter. Global mobile penetration reached 93 percent in Q1 2014.

Global mobile broadband subscriptions grew by around 35 percent year-on-year and reached 2.3 billion in Q1 2014. LTE continues to grow strongly and has reached 240 million subscriptions, with around 35 million additions in Q1 2014. WCDMA/HSPA had the highest net additions during the quarter at around 70 million. Almost all of these 3G/4G subscriptions have access to GSM/EDGE as a fallback. The number of GSM/EDGE-only subscriptions remained flat.

Smartphone uptake continued its strong momentum throughout the world. These devices accounted for around 65 percent of all mobile phones sold in Q1 2014, compared to around 50 percent during Q1 2013. And it doesn’t show any sign of slowing down. Of all mobile phone subscriptions today, around 35 percent are associated with smartphones, leaving considerable room for further uptake.

All regions are showing continued growth in mobile subscriptions. In Asia Pacific, this is driven by new subscribers. In more mature markets, such as North America and Western Europe, the growth comes from the increasing number of subscriptions per individual.

By the end of 2013, LTE penetration had already reached over 30 percent in Japan and over 50 percent in South Korea – the highest in the world. It is estimated that Japan and South Korea will account for around 25 percent of the world’s LTE subscriptions at the end of 2014.

Mainland China has started to roll out LTE and will add a significant number of LTE subscriptions during the forecast period, reaching over 700 million by the end of 2019. This means that China will represent more than 25 percent of total global subscriptions for LTE. In 2013, around 75 percent of mobile subscriptions in Asia Pacific were 2G, whereas in 2019 around 80 percent will be 3G/4G.

In 2013, the Middle East and Africa was dominated by GSM/EDGE, which represented around 85 percent of mobile subscriptions in the region. Mobile subscriptions will grow from 1.2 billion in 2013 to 1.9 billion in 2019. By this time WCDMA/HSPA will be the dominant technology with 65 percent of total mobile subscriptions.

However, GSM/EDGE-only subscriptions will still be significant. In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, GSM will remain the dominant technology until 2018, due to the dominance of lower income consumers using 2G-enabled handsets.

1. Mobile devices: Total smartphone subscriptions reached 1.9 billion in 2013 and are expected to grow to 5.6 billion in 2019. One of the main reasons for this is a notable increase in subscriptions in Asia Pacific and Middle East and Africa, as medium-high income users in these markets exchange their basic phones for smartphones. This is due in part to the availability of smartphones in lower price ranges.

Today, the majority of mobile subscriptions – around 4.5 billion – are still for basic phones, but it is predicted that the global figure for smartphone subscriptions will exceed those for basic phones by 2016. Regional differences will be significant. In 2019, the number of smartphone subscriptions in Europe will be around 765 million – surpassing the total population number. In comparison, 50 percent of handset subscriptions in Middle East and Africa will be for smartphones.

The number of mobile subscriptions for mobile PCs, tablets and mobile routers is expected to grow from 300 million in 2013 to around 700 million in 2019.

2. LTE Advanced and carrier aggregation: A few operators in South Korea and Australia have commercially launched LTE-A CA in 2013. The initial focus in 2013 was the aggregation of 2×10 MHz LTE carriers to achieve a single 20 MHz LTE carrier that would support download speeds of up to 150 Mbps. Now, operators are shifting their focus to the aggregation of two and three 20 MHz carriers to achieve 40 MHz and 60 MHz LTE carriers respectively.

Using an LTE category 6 mobile device, 40 MHz of LTE spectrum can support download data speeds up to 300 Mbps. Several trials aggregating up to 40 MHz of spectrum on a commercial network have been completed to date. The deployment of CA is expected to continue in the second half of 2014 as category 6 devices (300 Mbps) become more widely available. In recent trials three 20 MHz LTE carriers were combined, resulting in a total of 60 MHz of aggregated spectrum. This provided download speeds of up to 450 Mbps using category 9 test devices.

3. LTE Broadcast: LTE Broadcast will address the growing consumer demand for video services by efficiently delivering video content with guaranteed quality levels. LTE Broadcast achieves these efficiencies by simultaneously delivering media content to multiple users over a single LTE data stream, rather than over a single data stream to each single user. LTE Broadcast also allows the operator to predefine the quality level for the content to be delivered by dimensioning the data bitrate to meet the service requirement needed for different types of content and resolutions.

LTE Broadcast has been commercially launched in Korea, and trials have been successfully completed in the United States, Australia, Germany, and the Netherlands. LTE Broadcast will enable operators to launch new video services.

4. Voice over LTE (VoLTE): VoLTE provides users with telecom-grade HD voice, video calling and other new, richer communication services on LTE smartphones, while enabling simultaneous LTE data services. As LTE is optimized for data transfer, it does not include the circuit-switched domain currently used for regular voice and SMS services.

The world’s first commercial VoLTE networks were launched in August 2012. There are currently three commercial networks that offer the service in South Korea, with millions of consumers using HD voice services on different models of VoLTE smartphones from several device vendors. Several operators in other regions are about to deploy VoLTE during 2014, primarily in Asia and North America.

5. Mobile backhaul: As network density increases with higher capacities, backhaul becomes more critical, as it needs to be aligned with the radio access capacities to avoid creating bottlenecks. In 2019, high capacity base stations are expected (in the more advanced mobile broadband networks) to require backhaul in the 1 Gbps range, whereas low capacity base stations are expected to require backhaul in the 100 Mbps range. Optical fiber transmission will increase its share of the mobile backhaul market and it is estimated it will connect more than 40 percent by 2019. Today, microwave dominates the market for transmission technologies for mobile backhaul worldwide.

Microwave now connects 60 percent of all base stations, and will continue to connect to around 50 percent in 2019. Due to continuous innovations and the availability of additional spectrum, microwave can now provide over 1 Gbps per site, and has the potential to provide 10 Gbps or beyond.

6. Small cells backhaul: The introduction of small cells in the radio access network as a complement to the macro cell layer will introduce many site and backhaul challenges. Small cells will require more cost-effective, scalable and easy-to-install backhaul solutions that support a uniform user experience across the entire radio access network. However, due to positioning beneath roof height, there will be a substantial number of small cells without access to either a wired backhaul or without a clear line of sight – better known as Non-Line-Of-Sight (NLOS) – to an existing macro cell or remote fiber backhaul point-of-presence.

7. Video: Video is the fastest growing category of mobile data traffic and it is expected to grow around 13 times by 2019, by which time it is forecasted to account for over 50 percent of the total data traffic on cellular networks in 2019. For instance, as operators increasingly make their own TV services available via streaming, it is becoming more common to watch video over mobile networks. Smartphone users consume video in various forms, including streaming videos, movies and TV programs, as well as user-generated clips and video telephony over both cellular and Wi-Fi networks.

8. Music streaming: Music Streaming is gaining popularity, but functions such as caching of content and offline playlists limit the impact on traffic growth. Audio traffic is still expected to increase 8-fold by 2019. Web browsing is predicted to grow 6-fold over the same period. Its relative share will however decline by 2019 from today’s 10 percent as a result of stronger growth in other categories.

9. Social Networking: Social Networking constitutes more than 10 percent of total mobile data traffic today and is predicted to grow 10 times between 2013 and 2019. The share will remain at the same level in 2019, even though social networking increasingly will include data-rich content.

10. Machine-to-Machine (M2M): M2M is taking off due to declining costs, improved coverage, more capable radio technologies, regulatory mandates and a growing range of successful applications and business models. At the end of 2013 there were around 200 million cellular M2M devices in active use, and this number is expected to grow 3–4 times by 2019. Presently,  majority of M2M devices in active use are still GSM-only. Given the long life cycle of M2M applications, investment in the latest available radio technology may support future needs. Such measures depend on the module’s price feasibility.

LTE M2M device penetration is expected to reach more than 20 percent in 2019, up from today’s 1 percent, and will represent more than 40 percent of shipments in the same year. M2M communication represents a small share – around 0.1 percent – of total cellular traffic in terms of bytes. This traffic share will go up as LTE M2M devices and more powerful processors are included in high bandwidth and low latency-demanding applications such as consumer electronics, vehicles and billboards.

Mobile Outlook

Total mobile subscriptions are expected to grow from 6.8 billion in Q1 2014 to 9.2 billion by the end of 2019. Global mobile broadband subscriptions are predicted to reach 7.6 billion by 2019 and will gain an increasing share of the total mobile subscriptions over time. By the end of 2019, mobile broadband subscriptions are expected to account for more than 80 percent of all mobile subscriptions, compared to around 30 percent in 2013.

Further build-out of WCDMA/HSPA will be driven by increased demand for internet access, the affordability of smartphones, and regulatory requirements to connect the unconnected. By the end of 2019, around 90 percent of the world’s population will have the opportunity to access the internet using WCDMA/HSPA networks.

LTE covered around 20 percent of the world’s population at the end of 2013 and is predicted that this will increase to over 65 percent by 2019. Today, LTE is being deployed in all regions, and subscriptions for this technology are predicted to reach 2.6 billion by 2019, representing around 30 percent of total mobile subscriptions. WCDMA/HSPA subscriptions are predicted to reach 4.5 billion by 2019.

Mobile data traffic is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 45 percent (2013–2019). This will result in a 10-fold increase by the end of 2019. Mobile data traffic will grow considerably faster than fixed data traffic over the forecast period – the fixed data traffic CAGR will be around 25 percent between 2013 and 2019. However, in absolute volume, fixed data traffic will remain dominant. Mobile data traffic represented 5 percent of total mobile and fixed traffic in 2013, and is expected to be 12 percent in 2019.

 

 

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