North America and developed Asia will outstrip Europe in terms of 5G connections in 2024 by a wide margin, says a report today.
The 2018 Ericsson Mobility Report says that 40% of the world’s population will be able to access 5G by 2024. But only 29% of Europeans will subscribe to 5G, compared with 55% of North Americans and 43% of people in South Korea, Japan and China.
Meanwhile there will be 4.1 billion internet of things (IoT) connections by 2024, said the vendor in the report, the latest in a series of annual snapshots of the industry. North-east Asia is expected to account for 2.7 billion of those IoT connections.
Ericsson’s networks business area head, Fredrik Jejdling, said: “As 5G now hits the market, its coverage build-out and uptake in subscriptions are projected to be faster than for previous generations. At the same time, cellular IoT continues to grow strongly. What we are seeing is the start of fundamental changes that will impact not just the consumer market but many industries.”
Meanwhile, existing technology is still growing fast in some parts of the world. There were 37 million new users in China in the third quarter of 2018 and 31 million new customers in India, plus another 27 million in the rest of the Asia-Pacific region.
The African market grew by 14 million in the same time – but in the rest of the world growth has stagnated, with no more than a couple of million new subscription in each of western Europe, North America and the Middle East. There were just one million in Latin America and four million in central and eastern Europe, says Ericsson.
Global penetration (see map) has reached 104% of the world’s population. Ericsson says: “The number of mobile subscribers is lower than the number of mobile subscriptions. Today, there are around 5.6 billion subscribers globally compared to 7.9 billion subscriptions.”
The survey says that “there will be 8.9 billion mobile subscriptions by the end of 2024. Mobile broadband subscriptions will reach 8.4 billion, accounting for close to 95% of all mobile subscriptions. The number of unique mobile subscribers is estimated to reach 6.2 billion by the end of the forecast period.”
Mobile data grow at an annualised rate of 79% in the third quarter of 2018 – “the highest growth rate since 2013”, says Ericsson.
In 2024, 74% of mobile data will be video, compared with 60% this year – and in 2024 the total mobile data traffic will be 136 exabytes a month, five times this year’s rate of 27 exabytes a month.
This year's report is here. Capacity's account of the 2017 report is here.
