Today Cisco has released Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast (2009-2014), as a part of Cisco VNI series forecast. Some of the highlights of ‘Global Mobile Data Traffic’ report are summed up below:
- Global mobile data traffic will double every year through 2014, increasing 39 times between 2009-2014, reaching 3.6 Exabytes per month in 2014.
- Almost 66{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} of world’s mobile traffic will be Video by 2014.
- Middle East & Africa will have highest growth in mobile traffic (CAGR 133{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3}), followed by Asia-Pacific (119{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3}) & North America ( 117{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3}).
- Smartphones represent only 13{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} of total global handsets, but they represent 78{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} of total global handset traffic. In fact smartphone traffic has doubled to 79 Mb per month in 2010, up from 35 Mb in 2009.
- Android phones are approaching iPhone levels of data use.
- Top 1{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} of the mobile data subscribers generate over 20{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} of mobile data traffic globally, which is less than 30{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} just one year back.
There’re some other interesting facts highlighted in the report, like there’re 48 million mobile phone users in world, who don’t have electricity at home or on an average a laptop generates 22 times more traffic than avg smartphone traffic.
In 2010, global mobile data traffic nearly tripled, for the third year in a row. This is quite satisfying, if you look down global economic downturn for past 2 years. The rise in data traffic is partly due to adoption of smartphones, as well as rise in usage of mobile devices like laptops. But are carriers getting their pie of revenue amid spurt in Smartphone usages or explosive data traffic growth?
It’s doubtful. In fact, if you look at Indian Telecom sector, all isn’t well here. A latest financial brief of Indian telecom sector, would give you the fact story behind all that’s happening. Bharti Airtel, India’s largest telecom operator company has reported 26.6{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} dip in net profit at Quarter ending Sep-10. Same is true for other telcos in business.
This month, India’s leading business magazine Forbes has published the true picture behind Tata’s telecom gamble. Though, I just got the glimpse of the document, it’s really not applauding to contain losses of 7000 Cr INR amid telecom gloom. Running the telecom business has become a rueful & regretful affair for those, who decided to jump in, by looking down the subscriber growth figures. Most of them are already regretting.
What’s the way out? Perhaps, as C.K. Prahlad rightly said, there’s urgent need to find ‘Fortune at the bottom of Pyramid’ or may be radical change in business model could be alternative. Though traffic stats look rosy, the real picture behind the scene isn’t that rosy or in other words, there’ nothing happy-go-merry scenario to cherish about. At one side, when telcos are feeling pressure from mobile handset industry to pile up capacity links, while on other side RoI is becoming nightmare for all. Its true paradox- what else?
