Ericsson expects 1 billion 5G subscriptions by 2023
In its November Mobility Report, tech giant Ericsson has put out some global key figures on the state of mobility as you can see in the graph below. The most interesting one is the number of 5G subscriptions by 2023 to be about 1 billion including the regions US, South Korea, Japan and China. This growth will be facilitated by the increase in demand for HD content streaming, applications in IoT both in home and industry, and the increased demand for faster connectivity in general.
I have my reservations about Zambia making a mark in these numbers, with 4G still not available in many areas, nor people using $G devices to that extent. Why supply a market when the demand is not yet there? Or will the technology be advertised so hard that demand rises. Whatever ISPs do, we’ll be here to watch and blog the hell out of it.
| Mobile subscriptions | 2016 | 2017 | 2023 forecast | CAGR** 2017-2023 | Unit |
| Worldwide mobile subscriptions | 7,510 | 7,790 | 9,120 | 3% | million |
| > Smartphone subscriptions | 3,840 | 4,410 | 7,270 | 9% | million |
| > Mobile PC, tablet and mobile router subscriptions |
240 | 260 | 330 | 4% | million |
| > Mobile broadband subscriptions | 4,410 | 5,160 | 8,450 | 9% | million |
| > Mobile subscriptions, GSM/EDGE-only | 3,010 | 2,560 | 640 | -21% | million |
| > Mobile subscriptions, WCDMA/HSPA | 2,260 | 2,380 | 1,970 | -3% | million |
| > Mobile subscriptions, LTE | 1,900 | 2,620 | 5,470 | 13% | million |
| > Mobile subscriptions, 5G | 1,000 | million | |||
| Mobile data traffic* | 2016 | 2017 | 2023 forecast | CAGR** 2017-2023 | Unit |
| > Data traffic per smartphone | 2.1 | 2.9 | 17 | 34% | GB/month |
| > Data traffic per mobile PC | 7.7 | 9.8 | 27 | 18% | GB/month |
| > Data traffic per tablet | 3.6 | 4.6 | 12 | 18% | GB/month |
| Total data traffic*** | 2016 | 2017 | 2023 forecast | CAGR** 2017-2023 | Unit |
| Total mobile data traffic | 8.8 | 14 | 110 | 42% | EB/month |
| > Smartphones | 7.2 | 11 | 100 | 44% | EB/month |
| > Mobile PCs and routers | 1.3 | 1.6 | 4.5 | 19% | EB/month |
| > Tablets | 0.32 | 0.47 | 1.8 | 25% | EB/month |
| Total fixed data traffic | 70 | 80 | 250 | 20% | EB/month |
In sub-Saharan Africa the company predicts that mobile subscriptions will increase from 700 (in 2017) to 900 million connections in 2013, a 6% CAGR *. Specific to smartphones subscriptions, there may be an increment from 340 to 840 million in 2023.
As for data traffic on smartphones, sub-Saharan Africa is expected to average from 1.4 to 7.0 GB per month. Total mobile data traffic should rise from 0.1 to 4.6 EB per month, about 50% CAGR.
*The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is a useful measure of growth over multiple time periods. It can be thought of as the growth rate that gets you from the initial investment value to the ending investment value if you assume that the investment has been compounding over the time period.
