Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Ericsson ConsumerLab Mobility Report 2015

 

Wazzup Pilipinas!

There is no doubt that the mobile industry will continue to exponentially grow through the coming years, and not surprisingly to find out that video content will still be the most in demand by online users.

At a gathering organized by Ericsson at the Makati Shangri-La Hotel this June 16, 2015, members of the media covering technology and business matters were presented with an appendix to the Mobility Report. he presentation was conducted by Afrizal Abdul Rahim, Ericsson Head of ConsumerLab for Region South East Asia and Oceania. Also present was Elie Hana, Ericsson President and Country Unit Head, Philippines and Pacific Islands (outgoing). Mr. Sean Gowran will soon be taking over as Ericsson head for the Philippine market.

The key highlights of the Ericsson Mobility Report was that by 2020, we would have about 9.2 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide, and when it comes to mobile broadband it will be  around 7.7 billion which is about 85 percent. We will have twice the number of smartphone subscriptions making 70 percent of the world's population having a smartphone. There will be 9x mobile data traffic primarily driven by video. For the population coverage, 90% WCDMA/GSM and 70% LTE.

As expected, the Philippines is dragging at the lower ends of each charts while countries like Singapore and Australia has the highest mobile broadband penetration. Popular apps were Facebook, YouTube, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and Viber.

What was baffling by the report was that it declared that as of 2014, only 30% smartphone penetration was recorded here in the Philippines but is expected to rise at 40% within 2015. But maybe it is only in Metro Manila and other big cities nationwide where I see everyone owning a smartphone or two. Still, I believe those statistics should be higher.






Below is the official press release from Ericsson:

Ericsson released its third South East Asia and Oceania Region Appendix to the Ericsson Mobility Report. The appendix illustrates regional contrasts in areas such as smartphone uptake, top app usage, access to LTE, and network performance. 

Mature markets such as Australia and Singapore, where LTE is widely available, have a very high mobile broadband penetration, already exceeding 90 percent. Developing markets on the other hand, still have a long way to go, which offers a unique opportunity for mobile operators to enhance the mobile broadband experience for users. 

The smartphone penetration in the Philippines is estimated at around 30 percent and is expected to be at around 40 percent by the end of 2015. This provides an exceptional growth opportunity for service providers and device manufacturers in South East Asia as users consume more data through newer and faster devices.

Afrizal Abdul Rahim, Ericsson Head of ConsumerLab for Region South East Asia and Oceania, says: “The increasing availability of affordable smartphones, internet access and mobility is enabling more consumers to access the benefits of the Networked Society. In fact, in the Philippines smartphones are the primary way of getting online”. 

“Today in South East Asia and Oceania, 25 percent of handsets are smartphones. We predict that by 2020, smartphone subscriptions will grow three times to almost 800 million in the region, while LTE and 3G subscriptions will constitute almost 25 and 70 percent, respectively, of regional mobile subscriptions by 2020,” Afrizal said.   

Uptake in smartphone subscriptions and growing interest in video and other app services will drive a nine-fold increase in mobile traffic volumes to three Exabytes /month by 2020. 

In the South East Asia and Oceania region, social networking, instant messaging and video streaming are among the top five app categories actively used by smartphone users in the region. In the Philippines, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Viber, YouTube and Instagram are the top five apps actively used by smartphone users.

For service providers, delivering a consistent user experience aligned with the most popular apps can help drive customer satisfaction. In order to do this, operators need to optimize and tune their networks to ensure users’ particular app coverage demands are catered for in different traffic situations and geographical areas.

Countries in the region with the best network performance are Australia and Singapore, due to their leadership in deploying LTE and LTE Advanced. This has meant that the gap in network performance with other countries across the region has widened. “However, we expect developing countries’ networks will greatly improve in performance over the coming years”, Afrizal concluded.

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