Asia-Pacific to lead the smartphone revolution

As uptake of smartphones and mobile data services increases across the globe, a new report from Ericsson this week put the Asia-Pacific region squarely at the centre of that growth over the next few decades.

The report from the Swedish communications equipment firm said traffic across mobile networks in the region is expected to increase more than sevenfold in the next six years, with average monthly data usage going from 1.2GB to 9GB.

“The data traffic is going to grow to six exabytes per month for 2021,” said Ericsson Australia and New Zealand head Emilio Romeo.

“Mobile data traffic almost doubled in 2015 already.”

The total number of mobile subscriptions in South East Asia and Oceania is expected to more than double to 1.25 billion, from 990 million in 2015, the report said, with smartphone subscriptions jumping to 820 million from 340 million.

“The rise of mobile broadband is attributed to a number of factors, including the affordability of smartphones and other devices, as well as the increasing popularity of data-intensive app types, such as video,” the report read.

“Along with increased mobile broadband availability, consumers will require consistent access to a variety of online services.”

The report claimed Australia and Singapore were leading the region in terms of speeds and latency, though the report did exclude New Zealand, which had the second-fastest LTE mobile broadband in the world according to a report from OpenSignal earlier this year.