Mobile data traffic is expected to grow 12-fold by the end of 2018

Ericsson has reported the mobile-data traffic to grow 12-fold by the end of 2018 and it is mainly driven by video. Increasing usage is driven by continual growth in the amount of content available as well as the improved network speeds that come with HSPA and LTE development finds Ericsson. Douglas Gilstrap, Senior Vice President and Head of Strategy at Ericsson, says: "LTE services will be available to about 60 percent of the world's population in 2018. We expect LTE subscriptions to exceed 1 billion in 2017, driven by more capable devices and demand for data-intensive services such as video. Owing to the build out of WCDMA/HSPA, network speeds have improved, and so has the user experience." The other market data shared by Ericsson includes: Video makes up the largest segment of data traffic in networks, and it is expected to grow around 60 percent annually up until the end of 2018. Video consumption is on average 2.6GB per subscription per month in some networks. While video is popular, users don't necessarily tend to spend the most time on data-heavy applications. Consumers spend more time on social networking: an average of up to 85 minutes per day in some networks. Smartphones accounted for around half of all mobile-phone sales in Q1 2013, compared with roughly 40 percent for the whole of 2012. The number of total mobile subscriptions grew by 8 percent glob...