The world is becoming more mobile and networked

According to the latest Ericsson Mobility Report, three quarters of global smartphone subscription growth came from Africa and Asia in the first quarter of this year, and this pattern is expected to continue up till 2020. 

The total number of mobile subscriptions in first quarter of 2015 stood at around 7.2 billion, including 108 million new subscriptions. The top five countries based on net additions are India (over 26 million), followed by China (over 8 million), Myanmar (over 5 million), Indonesia (over 4 million) and Japan (over 4 million).

In developing regions, growth is driven by new subscribers, as smartphones become more affordable, while in mature markets, the growth is coming from the rising number of devices each person buys. The state of the economy also plays a part in the uptake of subscriptions in different regions. 

Smartphone subscriptions will surpass those for basic phones by next year, and are set to more than double by 2020, by which time up to 70 per cent of the world’s population will have a smartphone. 

 

Connected devices

Mobile phones have been the largest growth segment among connected devices, and in the future, machine-to-machine options are also expected to show strong growth, driven by new uses such as with cars, machines and utility metering. The connected home is also driving connectivity in consumer electronics mostly over Wi-Fi or Ethernet.

In total, up to 26 billion devices will be connected by 2020, of which almost 15 billion will be by phone, tablet, laptop and PC. This does not include passive sensors and frequency ID tags.

 

Mobile data traffic

Total mobile data traffic is expected to rise at a compound annual growth rate of around 45 per cent, due mainly to both the rising number of smartphone subscriptions and rising data consumption per subscriber. 

By 2020, 80 per cent of mobile data traffic will come from smartphones, 45 per cent of which will be from the Asia-Pacific region due mainly to a rising number of subscriptions. China alone will be adding 400 million mobile subscriptions by 2020. 

In terms of applications, videos contribute to 60 per cent of data traffic with 40 to 60 per cent of it coming from YouTube. 

Music streaming is also gaining popularity, but functions such as content caching and offline playlists limit the impact on traffic growth. However, audio traffic is still expected to increase in line with total mobile traffic growth. 

The relative share of traffic generated by web browsing will have declined from 10 per cent in 2014 to 5 per cent by 2020 mainly as a result of stronger growth in the video category. 

 

Driving factors 

Consumer preferences are shifting towards more video and app-based mobile use relative to web browsing. And to accommodate this, devices are evolving – coming with video-capable formats, larger screens and higher display resolutions enabling better picture quality. 

Videos are also increasingly becoming part of other online content, including news, advertising and social media. Plus, user behaviour is changing, with videos being consumed or created in larger quantities on different types of devices.

 

Most-used apps

Social networking, instant messaging and video-streaming dominate in terms of smartphone usage in Southeast Asia and the Oceania region. Still, each nation is different, especially when it comes to instant messaging apps. For instance, in Australia and the Philippines, Facebook Messenger is the top instant messaging app, but in Singapore and Malaysia, WhatsApp tops the list. 

In Indonesia BlackBerry Messenger is the leading instant messaging app for smartphones, but LINE is preferred in Thailand.