MOSCOW, November 7 (Itar-Tass) — Total number of the mobile Internet subscribers in the world will reach roughly five million by 2016, one of the world’s leading IT companies, the Swedish Ericsson company, said in its report.
According to the document, the indicator will increase by 60 percent annually within the next five years.
Now, the total number of the mobile broadband access users is about 900 million, the company said.
Proceeding from studies, which are based on the results of measures in the operating global networks, the mobile traffic will increase tenfold within the next five years. Besides, 60 percent of the above-mentioned traffic will account for users, who live in the territory, which occupies smaller than one percent of the overall area of the planet.
Under the Ericsson estimates, more than 80 percent of the Earth’s population will have an access to the 3G broadband communication networks by 2016.
According to the document, transmission of video-content will become the major driver of such a growth. The company’s experts are confident that the traffic of such mobile devices, as cellular phones and smart phones, will develop very intensively.
The company pointed to the intensive growth of the smart phone popularity across the entire world. Russia’s smart phone penetration level has already reached 20 percent, and is expected to grow three times in the next four to five years.
Experts of the Ericsson company are confident that traffic of multipurpose smart phones will go up by 12 times in the midterm, thus reaching the amount comparable to the notebooks’ mobile traffic.
The recent report points to the significant hike in the total number of individuals and companies receiving considerable benefits from the use of mobile devices, broadband access and cloud services, the company’s high-ranking representative said.