Mobile devices and growth of mobile internet

Mobile Internet is growing at a rapid pace. The Cisco® Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update is part of the comprehensive Cisco VNI Forecast, an ongoing initiative to track and forecast the impact of visual networking applications on global networks. This paper presents some of Cisco's major global mobile data traffic projections and growth trends.

The study has come up with what's OBVIOUS - Mobile Internet is growing at a frantic pace. Overall mobile data traffic is expected to grow to 10.8 exabytes per month by 2016, an 18-fold increase over 2011. Mobile data traffic will grow at a CAGR of 78 percent from 2011 to 2016 as shown in  Figure 1

The Asia Pacific and Western Europe regions will account for over half of global mobile traffic by 2016. Middle East and Africa will experience the highest CAGR of 104 percent, increasing 36-fold over the forecast period. Asia Pacific (a region that now includes Japan) will have the second highest CAGR of 84 percent, increasing 21-fold over the forecast period. The emerging market regions of Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America will have CAGRs of 83 percent and 79 percent respectively, and combined with Middle East and Africa will represent an increasing share of total mobile data traffic, up from 15 percent at the end of 2011 to 19 percent by 2016.

Few interesting points that have come up as a result of this update :

• Global mobile data traffic grew 2.3-fold in 2011, more than doubling for the fourth year in a row.
• Mobile network connection speeds grew 66 percent in 2011
• The top 1 percent of mobile data subscribers generate 24 percent of mobile data traffic, down from 35 percent 1 year ago
• Smartphones represent only 12 percent of total global handsets in use today, but they represent over 82 percent of total global handset traffic
• In 2011, the number of mobile-connected tablets tripled to 34 million, and each tablet generated 3.4 times more traffic than the average smartphone

and the exhaustive report can be reviewed at source.

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