India's mobile data traffic to grow 15 times by 2021

 Mobile data traffic in the country is expected to grow the fastest globally at 15 times by 2021, backed by exponential growth in the smartphone penetration, says the Ericsson Mobility report.

The report, published on Wednesday, says that India registered globally the highest growth in terms of net additions in mobile subscriptions during the March quarter at over 21 million.

“India is followed by Myanmar and Indonesia with five million net additions each and US and Pakistan with over three million net additions each,” the report adds. Globally, there are around five billion subscribers compared with 7.4 billion subscriptions. And the mobile penetration level in India is at 80%.

The global mobile data traffic to grew 60% between Q1 2015 and Q1 2016, due to rising numbers of smartphone subscriptions and increasing data consumption per subscriber. By the end of 2021, around 90% of mobile data traffic will be from smartphones.

The use of cellular data for smartphone video grew 127% in a period of 15 months between 2014 and 2015. “Over a period of four years (2011-15), there has been a 50% drop in the time teens spend watching TV/video on a TV screen, and in contrast an 85% increase in those viewing TV/video on a smartphone,” the report states.

The latest edition of the report reveals that globally Internet of Things (IoT) is set to overtake mobile phones as the largest category of connected devices by 2018. “The number of IoT connected devices is expected to grow 23% annually, between 2015 and 2021.

According to Ericsson Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer Rima Qureshi, IoT is now accelerating as device costs fall and innovative applications emerge. “From 2020, commercial deployment of 5G networks will provide additional capabilities that are critical for IoT, such as network slicing and the capacity to connect exponentially more devices than is possible today,” she said.

Of the 28 billion total devices that will be connected by 2021, close to 16 billion will be IoT devices, adds the report. Western Europe will lead the way in adding IoT connections – the number of IoT devices in this market is projected to grow 400% by 2021.