50 billion connected devices by 2020

Ericsson CEO forecasts growth in mobile market

Speaking at Ericsson’s press conference at the Mobile Mobile World Congress in Barcelona yesterday Hans Vestberg, President and CEO commented that as the mobile world grows the only way to remain competitive is for mobile companies to be continually innovative.

“Our future success will be determined by the ability to see beyond technology, stay ahead of our customers and solve their problems before they are even aware of them. This will require us to always put our customers first, always have the best competence and to drive innovation throughout the customer relationship.”

“In the past decade telecommunications have become the nerve system of the world. The number of mobile subscriptions worldwide has grown sixfold to 4.6 billion. Mobile broadband has had its breakthrough and we believe that we will see 3 billion new mobile broadband subscriptions in the next five years.” Vestburg added.

According to Vestberg Ericsson forecasts massive growth in the mobile PC market.

“We forecast that by 2015 mobile PC subscriptions will have grown six times and the traffic generated will grow more than 50 times compared with the end of 2009. In the same time period smartphone devices will grow four times and the traffic they generate will have grown more than 25 times. The rapidly increasing traffic puts a focus on network capacity and quality.

In addition to this connectivity will experience unparalleled growth in the next decade.

“We envision 50 billion connected devices by 2020. Patients will be remotely connected to hospitals, trucks will be online with logistics centers for efficient routing, and city students will be connected to students in rural villages halfway around the world. Several operators have already established machine-to-machine departments to meet these demands. In this development we have to move from traditional telecom to IP, from hardware to software and from network rollouts to network evolution.

“HSPA and 4G/LTE will enable the 50 billion connected devices and the continued traffic growth. Several leading operators have given us the confidence to deliver their 4G/LTE networks and we have established technology leadership and scale advantages.