Magic milestone?
Ericsson has estimated that the number of mobile subscriptions will top 1 billion before the end of 2011.
It believes the greatest number of subscriptions, in the region of 400 million, will come from the Asia Pacific region, while it also expects significant growth in North America and Western Europe, generating around 200 million subscriptions each.
Just last year mobile broadband subscriptions passed a significant milestone, surpassing the half-a-billion mark across the globe, according to Ericsson.
The firm believes the mobile broadband adoption has been boosted by the rapid rise of smartphones plus connected laptops and tablets, coupled with the introduction of high-performance networks.
Smartphone users' increasing use of apps and mobile internet services have contributed to the growth of data traffic and Ericsson had previously said that traffic had tripled in a year to August 2010.
The company also dubbed 2010 a ‘good one for Long-Term Evolution (LTE)". It said it has now signed commercial LTE contracts with 11 operators across the world and half of the 16 networks it has delivered have been commercially launched.
Ericsson said that users' consumption of net-based media has changed thanks to faster networks and the take-up of smartphones, while TeliaSonera's survey of its LTE users found almost a quarter of people watch more TV online and 46 percent surf the web more away from home thanks to the new technology.
If one ambitious prediction was not enough, Ericsson also said it expects mobile broadband subscriptions to top 3.8bn by 2015 with 95 percent driven by HSPA, CDMA and LTE networks.
