Ericsson Mobility Report: Smartphones will consist of 50% the region’s mobile phones by 2019

• Mobile subscriptions will near 9.3 billion by 2019, 5.6 billion of which will be for smartphones driven the region’s smartphone uptake.
• 90 percent of the world’s population will be covered by WCDMA/HSPA in 2019 and 65 percent will be covered by LTE
• Smartphone subscriptions will triple and smartphone traffic will increase 10 times between 2013 and 2019
• 80% of Middle East & Africa subscriptions will be 3G/4G in 2019

The latest Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) Mobility Report reveals that mobile subscriptions are expected to reach 9.3 billion by 2019, and more than 60 percent of these – 5.6 billion – will be for smartphones driven by the uptake of smartphones in region Middle East and Africa as people will likely exchange their basic phones for smartphones which will consist of 50% of total handsets in the region. To support the smartphone user experience, WCDMA/HSPA networks are predicted to cover 90 percent of the world’s population by 2019. Moreover, almost two-thirds (65 percent) of the world’s population will be covered by 4G/LTE networks.

Currently, smartphones represent 25-30 percent of all mobile phone subscriptions, yet they account for the majority (55 percent) of mobile phones sold in Q3.

In 2013, the Middle East and Africa has been dominated by GSM/EDGE, which represents around 80 percent of mobile subscriptions in the region. Dramatic changes will take place in the coming years, and in 2019 WCDMA/HSPA and LTE will represent the same share of subscriptions as GSM/EDGE does today.

In 2019, almost all handsets in Western Europe and North America will be smartphones, compared to 50 percent of handset subscriptions in the Middle East and Africa.

Total smartphone subscriptions will reach 1.9 billion at the end of 2013 and are expected to grow to 5.6 billion in 2019. One of the main reasons for this is a notable increase in Asia Pacific and Middle East and Africa subscriptions, as people will be likely to exchange their basic phones for smartphones. This is due in part to the availability of smartphones in lower price ranges.

Anders Lindblad, president of Ericsson, Middle East, says: “The rapid pace of smartphone uptake in the region has been phenomenal, with six million new mobile subscriptions in the

Middle East in Q3 2013 alone. Amazingly, this growth does not show signs of slowing down. In the Middle East and Africa, mobile traffic will increase 11 fold between 2013 and 2019.

“Mobile users in the Middle East are contributing massively to global growth overall, leading the region closer to a Networked Society, where everything is connected in real time.”      

Smartphone traffic will grow by 10 times between 2013 and 2019, reaching 10 exabytes. Video is growing 55 percent annually, and will represent more than 50 percent of the mobile data traffic, while social networking and web services will account for around 10 percent each in 2019.

This edition of Ericsson Mobility Report includes further analysis of app coverage2 – a new approach to evaluating network performance and user experience – with particular focus on indoor and city environments. Radio signals attenuate rapidly as they go through buildings and the high concentration of users, building material and height all pose additional challenges. Having good mobile coverage is an important aspect of life for many; it is now ranked among the top five satisfaction factors of life in a city. As the majority of mobile traffic originates from cities, Ericsson compares three different strategies to provide indoor coverage using simulation software to predict the extent of app coverage in high-rise buildings in this issue.

To accompany the 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.