Those at Cisco are promoting an intelligent system for predicting the future and to demonstrate how accurate it is, they thought of making some predictions about the world situation in 2020, which is presented in full below.
Cisco: In 2020 more people will have a mobile phone than a car, access to electricity and running water
- In 4 years, 70% of the planet's population will use mobile phones
- Smart devices will account for 98% of mobile data traffic by 2020
- Video content created or viewed on mobile will have the highest growth rate
Bucharest, February 11, 2016 – The number of mobile phone users has increased 5 times since the early 2000s when the first camera phone was released. The pace of growth will continue to accelerate, and by 2020, there will be 5,5 billion mobile phone users worldwide, or 70% of the planet's population, according to the Cisco Visual Networking Index™ (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic report Forecast (2015-2020). Also, the rapid increase in the number of mobile phone users, smart devices, mobile video and the expansion of 4G networks will generate an 8-fold increase in mobile data traffic in the next five years.
Smart devices and connections will account for 72% of all mobile terminals/connections by 2020 – up from 36% in 2015. Smart devices will account for 98% of mobile data traffic by 2020, Cisco estimates and smartphones will generate the majority of traffic. Thus, by 2020, 81% of global mobile data traffic will be produced by smartphones, compared to 76% last year. The expansion of mobile phones, including phablets (hybrid devices that combine features of mobile phones and tablets) is taking place at a very accelerated pace, so that by 2020 more people will have a mobile phone (5,4, 5,3 billion) than electricity (3,5 billion), running water (2,8 billion) or car (XNUMX billion).
Video content created or viewed on mobile will have the highest growth rate. The number of 4G connections will exceed that of 2G connections by 2018 and that of 3G connections by 2020. 4G will generate more than 70% of all mobile data traffic and almost six times more traffic each month than non-4G connections until 2020.
"Mobility is the predominant enabler of digital transformation globally, given the billions of people and the growing number of people and things that are connected to the Internet," said Doug Webster, vice president of Service Provider Marketing, Cisco. "Future investments in mobile networks such as 5G and new Wi-Fi solutions will be necessary to meet new customer demands, IT security concerns and end-user demands. IoT innovations will continue to generate real benefits for people, businesses and societies."
The evolution of mobile data traffic in Central and Eastern Europe
- 9-fold increase in mobile data traffic between 2015 and 2020. This increase is 2 times faster than the evolution recorded by fixed data traffic;
- Mobile phone users: In 2015, 64% of the population used mobile phones. In 2020 this share will rise to 65%;
- Mobile video: video will generate 75% of mobile data traffic in the region in 2020, up from 54% at the end of 2015;
- By 2020, smartphones will generate 82% of all mobile data traffic;
- The number of 3G connections surpassed 2015G connections in the region in 2. Traffic on 4G networks will increase 16 times between 2015 and 2020 and will generate 69% of the total mobile data traffic, compared to only 17% at the end of last year;
- Cloud apps will account for 91% of all mobile data traffic in 2020, compared to 82% in 2015
- M2M traffic will grow 21 times over the same period and will be responsible for 4% of all mobile data traffic in the region in 2020.
- By 2020 there will be 17,3 million wearable devices, of which 1,3 million will have built-in cellular connections
Estimates on the evolution of mobile data traffic globally
Global mobile data traffic shows no signs of slowing down
- The estimated traffic of 366,8 exabytes of mobile data forecast for 2020 is equivalent to:
– A volume of mobile data traffic worldwide 120 times higher than in 2010;
– 81 billion billion images – the equivalent of 28 images (viewed/uploaded) every day by every person on the planet for a year;
– 7 trillion video clips – over 2,5 video clips every day for every person on Earth for a year;
- From 2015 to 2020, global mobile data traffic will grow twice as fast as fixed data traffic;
- By 2020, over 75% of mobile data traffic will be video content watched or downloaded.
Mobile devices and connections are getting smarter
- By 2020 there will be 11,6 billion mobile devices / connections, of which 8,5 billion personal mobile devices and 3,1 billion M2M connections – up from 7,9 billion mobile terminals and M2M connections in 2015 ;
- Globally, 98% of mobile data traffic will be generated by smart devices/connections, up from 89% last year.
- Smartphones, laptops and tablets will generate around 92% of all global mobile data traffic by 2020, down from 94% in 2015. M2M traffic will account for 7% of global mobile data traffic by 2020 – growing from 3% at the end of 2015; while traditional phones will generate only 1% of all this traffic, down from 3% in 2015.
The number of M2M connections, including wearable devices, continues to grow
M2M refers to applications that allow wireless systems to communicate with similar devices to support, for example, GPS system operation, asset monitoring, utility system measurements, or to facilitate video surveillance. Wearables are devices that can be worn (smart watches or bracelets that monitor health status) and that transmit information over the network, either directly via built-in cellular connection, or with the help of another device such as a smartphone, via Bluetooth, Wi- Be etc. Wearables are included in a sub-segment of M2M connections.
- By 2020, M2M connections will account for 26,4% of all connected mobile devices – up from 7,7% in 2015;
- By 2020, M2M connections will generate 6,7% of all mobile data traffic, up from 2,7% in 2015;
- By 2020, more than 600 million wearable devices will be in use, up from 97 million in 2015.
The number of Wi-Fi hotspots is constantly increasing
- Globally, the total number of Wi-Fi hotspots, including those inside homes, will increase 7-fold, from 64 million in 2015 to 432 million in 2020. Last year, monthly traffic generated only of content downloads (3,9 exabytes) via Wi-Fi exceeded monthly mobile data traffic in cellular networks (3,7 exabytes) for the first time;
- By 2020, 38,1 exabytes of traffic will be generated monthly from content downloads over Wi-Fi.
Cisco Mobile VNI Forecast methodology
The Cisco VNI Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast (2015-2020) is based on independent analyst forecasts and worldwide studies of mobile data usage. Added to this are estimates from Cisco experts on application usage, minutes consumed and data transfer speeds. Key enablers such as mobile broadband data speeds and device processing power are also factored into this report's forecasts.
