Mobile subscriptions to grow about 16% to 8.9 billion in 2022: Report

It says that there are 1050 million mobile subscriptions in India with 81% of the penetration within the population

The latest Ericsson Mobility Report — publication on mobile data traffic — released on Tuesday, forecasts that there will be around 15.7% growth in mobile subscriptions to 8.9 billion in 2022, of which 90% will be for mobile broadband. At this point in time, there will be 6.1 billion unique subscribers. According to the report, there are currently 1050 million mobile subscriptions in India with 81% of the penetration within the population.

As of third quarter (Q) of 2016, 84 million new mobile subscriptions were added during the quarter to reach a total of 7.5 billion, growing at around 3% year-on-year. India grew the most with +15 million net additions during the quarter. Followed by China at +14 million, Indonesia at +6 million, Myanmar at +4 million and the Philippines at +4 million. Mobile broadband subscriptions are growing by around 25% year-on-year (y-o-y), increasing by approximately 190 million in Q3 2016 alone. The total number of mobile broadband subscriptions is now around 4.1 billion.

About smartphone penetration, it informs that by the end of 2016, there will be 3.9 billion smartphone subscriptions. Almost 90% of these subscriptions will be registered on WCDMA/HSPA and LTE networks. Subscriptions for smartphones now account for 55% of all mobile subscriptions. By 2022, with the compound annual growth rate of 10% the number of smartphone subscriptions is forecast to reach 6.8 billion, with more than 95% of the subscriptions registered on WCDMA/HSPA, LTE and 5G networks.

On 5G subscriptions, the report says that there will be 550 million 5G subscriptions in 2022. North America will lead the way in uptake of 5G subscriptions, where a quarter of all mobile subscriptions are projected to be for 5G in 2022 — representing the highest market penetration in the world.

The report says that Asia Pacific will be the second fastest growing region for 5G subscriptions, with 10% of all subscriptions being 5G in 2022. From 2016 to 2022, Middle East and Africa will dramatically shift from a region with a majority of GSM/EDGE-only subscriptions to 80% of all subscriptions on WCDMA/HSPA and LTE. 

Ulf Ewaldsson, Chief Strategy and Technology Officer, Ericsson, says: "Almost 90% of smartphone subscriptions are on 3G and 4G networks today and standardized 5G networks are expected to be available in 2020. We are already seeing a great interest among operators in launching pre-standard 5G networks. 5G will accelerate the digital transformation in many industries, enabling new use cases in areas such as IoT (Internet of Things), automation, transport and big data."

Mobile data traffic continues to grow, driven both by increased smartphone subscriptions and a continued increase in average data volume per subscription, fueled primarily by more viewing of video content. In Q3 2016, data traffic grew around 10% q-o-q and 50% y-o-y.

Mobile video traffic is forecast to grow by around 50% annually through 2022 to account for nearly 75% of all mobile data traffic. Social networking is the second biggest data traffic type after video, forecast to grow by 39% annually over the coming six years. It also says that consumers are increasingly using live video streaming apps to interact with friends, family and followers. Adding further, around 29 billion connected devices are forecast by 2022, of which around 18 billion will be related to IoT.