Ericsson expects smartphone traffic to triple by 2011

Ericsson has created a hyper-color portrait of the fast-moving mobile industry in its new "Traffic and Market Data" report, which is packed with quotable facts such as that the world's networks gained 135 million new subscriptions during the recent third quarter alone.

It found the global mobile penetration rate to be at 82%, with mobile subscriber numbers at now nearly 5.8 billion, driven swiftly by India and China, where 50 million new users were added during the quarter. Smartphone traffic, Ericsson expects, will triple in 2011, and by 2016, big city dwellers — "those living on less than 1% of the Earth's total land area" — will be responsible for 60% of mobile traffic.

In short, plenty of reasons for any carrier not already stressing and building out its network to get started.

"In all parts of the world, people are adopting more advanced mobile devices that enable connectivity anywhere, anytime. This trend is taking us towards a society where places, people and devices are constantly connected — a networked society," write the report authors.

While mobile penetration is skyrocketing, they add, and users' behavior is changing just as fast — for example, in 2009 mobile data use on smartphones edged past voice; by 2011, it had doubled it. It's this intersection of our morphing societies and growing mobile infrastructure that the report speaks to most poignantly.

The following were among the Ericsson team's many findings:

-- Nearly 40% of smartphone users check the Internet before getting out of bed.

-- Doubling a country's broadband speed increases its GDP by 0.3%

-- Smartphones accounted for approximately 30% of all handsets sold during the third quarter, compared to 20% for the full year of 2010. Still, smartphone users are only 10% of the world's subscribers, leaving plenty more room for growth.

-- Strong demand for DSL in China is keeping the global demand for fixed broadband subscriptions high. During the second quarter of this year, subscriptions totally nearly 550 million.

-- WCDMA/HSPA technology was accessible by 35% of the world's population in 2010, a figure now up to 40%. By 2016, the figure is expected to rush ahead to an estimated 80%.

-- Driven mostly by demand for mobile video, mobile data traffic is expected to grow by 60% by 2016.

-- Also by 2016, mobile broadband subscriptions are expected to rise from 2011's 900 million to 5 billion. And the number of high-traffic smartphones will grow more than 5 times, generating 12 times the traffic. Tablet subscriptions will grow 10 times, generating 40 times the traffic.

-- Network planners will want to take note of popular usage patterns leading to network bottlenecks. Mobile PCs, the biggest data users, are mainly used for longer sessions during the day and in the evening, and are turned off early and late in the day. Smartphones are used in quicker bursts, as are tablets, starting from a user's waking moments, before even leaving the bed, and peaking during the morning commute.

-- Finally, the report includes a section linking mobility to socioeconomic development. Broadband speed, Ericsson found, is a "highly important" factor in spurring economic development. For every 10 percentage point increase in broadband penetration, it found GDP to increase by 1%. Additionally, 80 new jobs are said to be created for every 1,000 new broadband connections.