Smartphone Subscribers Likely to Double by 2020: Ericsson Forecast

Subscriptions for smartphones globally will more than double by 2020 and help drive an expected eightfold surge in mobile data traffic, Swedish telecoms network gear maker Ericsson predicted on Tuesday.

The company said it expected there will be 6.1 billion smartphone subscriptions globally by the end of 2020, up from 2.7 billion in 2014, as more people in emerging markets buy cheap smartphones instead of basic phones.

In its semi-annual Mobility Report, Ericsson's forecast now incorporates an additional year compared to the June outlook, which ended in 2019.

"The trends are stable and the underlying growth factors are the same," Peter Jonsson, project manager for the report, told Reuters.

Ericsson, the world's top mobile network equipment maker, expects an eightfold surge in mobile data traffic between 2014 and 2020, while in June it forecast tenfold growth between 2013 and 2019. The difference is explained by a higher starting point in 2014, Jonsson said.

More use of mobile data per smartphone subscription, mainly driven by video, is contributing to the expected increase. Video is expected to increase its share of total mobile traffic in 2020 to 55 percent, up from 45 percent in 2014, Ericsson said.

Fifth-generation mobile telephony is expected to be commercially deployed in 2020, Ericsson said, adding that 5G is predicted to have a faster uptake than 4G, which again was faster than 3G.

The new generation of mobile phone technology is expected not only to bring higher data speeds, but also to better accommodate a wide variety of connected devices.

© Thomson Reuters 2014