With the advancements made to mobile devices these days, almost everyone has one, and almost everyone is constantly on them. Cisco predicted that by 2018 there will be more mobile devices than people.
According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast for 2013 to 2018, the number of mobile devices worldwide by 2018 will exceed 10 billion, up from 7 billion in 2013. Due to an increase in mobile connections, mobile data traffic is expected to increase 11x in the next four years, growing at a compound annual rate of 61% and reaching 15.9 exabytes per month.
Key factors driving mobile data traffic, according to Cisco, include:
• More mobile users: There will be nearly 5 billion mobile users by 2018
• More mobile connections: There will be more than 10 billion mobile devices by 2018
• Fast mobile speeds: The average global mobile network speed is expected to grow from 1.4Mbps to 2.5Mbps by 2018
• More mobile video: Nearly 70% of global mobile data traffic will be from video by 2018
Smartphones, laptops and tablets will represent almost 94% of mobile data traffic by 2018; mobile-to-mobile connections will represent 5% of traffic; and basic handsets will account for the remaining 1%.
For the first time Cisco added wearables to its annual mobile traffic report. It reported 21.7 million wearable devices globally in 2013, and predicted the number will grow to 176.9 million by 2018.
For North America, Cisco projected it will see 50% compound annual growth rate of mobile data traffic, 8x growth and reach 2.95 exabytes per month by 2018.
The full report can be found here.
