Video and Young Adults Pushing Mobile Traffic: Ericsson Report
Mobile video viewing will only skyrocket in the years ahead. The communication giant Ericsson released its November 2017 Mobility Report today, and forecasts that mobile video traffic will grow by around 50 percent each year through 2023. At that time, video will account for 75 percent of all mobile data traffic. While other areas will grow—such as social networking—their share of total traffic will decline due to the surging growth of streamed video.
The rapid growth of mobile video traffic comes partly from increased interest in high-resolution content and immersive formats such as 360º video. Ericsson notes that a 360º video on YouTube uses 4 to 5 times the bandwidth of a standard video at the same quality (and 1080p video uses about 4 times more bandwidth than 480p video). The other big driver in mobile video is young adults, who stream much more than older users. Young millennials (age 15 to 24) stream 2.5 times more video than people over 45.
Viewer preferences for on-demand and catch-up programming are also driving the trend. Half of TV and video viewing will be mobile by 2020, the report says.
Total mobile data traffic will reach 110 exabytes by 2023, which Ericsson notes is the equivalent of 5.5 million years of HD video streaming. The strongest mobile use comes from North America, where mobile users will average 7GB of traffic per month by the end of this year.
For more results, view the full report (no registration required).
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