Ericsson: North America to Lead in 5G Rollouts

Mobile broadband to account for 90 percent of all subscriptions by 2022, according to the newly-released Ericsson Mobility Report. North America is set to lead in 5G rollouts and Ericsson is predicting that 25 percent of all subscriptions will be 5G in North America in 2022, representing the highest market penetration in the world.

“Almost 90 percent of smartphone subscriptions are on 3G and 4G networks today and standardized 5G networks are expected to be available in 2020. We are already seeing a great interest among operators in launching pre-standard 5G networks. 5G will accelerate the digital transformation in many industries, enabling new use cases in areas such as IoT, automation, transport and big data,” stated Ulf Ewaldsson, Chief Strategy and Technology Officer, Ericsson.

Some highlights of the Ericsson Mobility Report:

• Asia Pacific will be the second fastest growing region for 5G subscriptions, with 10 percent of all subscriptions being 5G in 2022. From 2016 to 2022, Middle East and Africa will dramatically shift from a region with a majority of GSM/EDGE-only subscriptions, to 80 percent of all subscriptions on WCDMA/HSPA and LTE.
• By the end of 2016, there will be 3.9 billion smartphone subscriptions. Almost 90 percent of these subscriptions will be registered on WCDMA/HSPA and LTE networks. 
• By 2022, the number of smartphone subscriptions is forecast to reach 6.8 billion, with more than 95 percent of the subscriptions registered on WCDMA/HSPA, LTE and 5G networks.
• As of Q3 2016, 84 million new mobile subscriptions were added during the quarter to reach a total of 7.5 billion, growing at around 3 percent year-on-year. 
• India grew the most in terms of net additions during the quarter (+15 million), followed by China (+14 million), Indonesia (+6 million), Myanmar (+4 million) and the Philippines (+4 million). 
• Mobile broadband subscriptions are growing by around 25 percent year-on-year, increasing by approximately 190 million in Q3 2016 alone. 
• The total number of mobile broadband subscriptions is now around 4.1 billion.
• In Q3 2016, data traffic grew around 10 percent quarter-on-quarter and 50 percent year-on-year.
• Mobile video traffic is forecast to grow by around 50 percent annually through 2022 to account for nearly 75 percent of all mobile data traffic.

https://www.ericsson.com/news/2056743?categoryFilter=press-releases_1270673222_c