Ericsson, which provides tech and services to telecom operators around the globe, estimates that the number of mobile broadband subscriptions has grown to a whopping 500 million during the course of 2010, and that this number will double before the end of this year.
Ericsson forecasts that the majority of subscriptions, roughly 400 million in total, is expected to be concentrated in the Asia Pacific region, followed by North America and Western Europe with more than 200 million subscriptions each.
The strong surge in mobile broadband adoption is of course largely a result of the accelerating growth of smartphones, laptops and tablets, and the increasing usage of mobile Internet services and apps. Ericsson says global mobile data traffic continues to grow rapidly – the company announced in August 2010 that it had tripled in just one year.
By 2015, Ericsson believes mobile broadband subscriptions will top 3.8 billion, with 95 percent driven by HSPA, CDMA and LTE networks.
(Photo via Ericsson)