By 2024 Smartphones Will Consume 21GB+ of Mobile Data on Average

The latest biannual mobility report from Ericsson has revealed that the world is home to a total of 7.9 billion mobile subscriptions and this will hit 8.9 billion by 2024. Over the same period the amount of monthly mobile data (3G, 4G and 5G) traffic consumed by a Smartphone user will rise from 5.6 GigaBytes today to 21GB.

The report, which notes that 2019 will also be the year that future 5G technology finally “takes off” (albeit only via very limited commercial deployments in the UK and EU), finds that some 90% of total mobile data (mobile broadband) traffic is generated by Smartphones today and this is forecast to reach 95% by 2024.

As with fixed line services, the main source of data consumption in mobile networks is video traffic (e.g. YouTube, Netflix, iPlayer etc.) – currently accounts for 60% – and this is predicted to grow by 35% annually through 2024 to account for 74% of all mobile data traffic. Traffic from social networking is also expected to rise – increasing by 24% annually over the next 6 years.

North East Asia is of course the world’s most populous region and, as such, has the largest share of global mobile data traffic – close to 30% at the end of 2018. In 2024, total mobile data traffic in the region is forecast to reach 39EB (ExaBytes) per month (up from 11EB today). Over the same period Western Europe will go from 2.6EB per month today to 14EB in 2024.

At present the vast majority of mobile subscriptions make use of 4G (LTE) networks, although a significant portion are also on 3G (HSPA / UTMS) networks and some unfortunate soles are still stuck with the old 2G standard. But it’s clear that future 5G networks are about to start having a significant impact.

“5G networks are currently being deployed in several regions worldwide and commercial launches are already taking place. One of the first 5G use cases will be fixed wireless access, as devices with form factors suitable for customer premises equipment will be early to the market, and will not have the stringent size, weight and power consumption requirements that come with smartphones,” said the report (download here).

Global Key Figures

* Active devices.

** CAGR is calculated on unrounded figures.

*** Figures are rounded (see methodology) and therefore summing up (of rounded data may result in slight differences from the actual total).