WNA

Ericsson expects total mobile subscriptions will grow from 6.8 billion in in the first quarter of 2014 to 9.2 billion by the end of 2019, according to the company’s annual “Mobility Report” (pdf). Mobile broadband subscriptions are predicted to reach 7.6 billion by 2019.

In two years’ time, in 2016, the number of smartphone subscriptions will exceed those for basic phones and by 2019 the number of smartphone subscriptions is expected to reach 5.6 billion, according to Ericsson.

North America is likely to dominate LTE subscriptions through 2019, says Ericsson. Europe will only see LTE subscription penetration of 30 percent compared to 85 percent in North America the same year.

By 2019, China is expected to reach more than 700 million LTE subscriptions, representing more than 25 percent of total global subscriptions for LTE.

North East Asia operators will cover fully 95 percent of the population with LTE by 2019, with LTE subscriber penetration reaching 45 percent by then.

Next year the total number of mobile subscriptions will exceed the world’s population. Mobile subscriptions have grown by 7 percent year-over-year, with 120 million net additions in Q1 alone.

In two years’ time, in 2016, the number of smartphone subscriptions will exceed those for basic phones and by 2019 the number of smartphone subscriptions is expected to reach 5.6 billion.

To accompany the Ericsson Mobility Report, Ericsson has created the Traffic Exploration Tool, for creating customized graphs and tables using data from the report. The information can be filtered by region, subscription, technology, traffic and device type.