Telecom Lead India: With 18 million dip in mobile user base in Q3, India had the lowest growth in mobile subscriptions among all telecom markets in the world, according to Ericsson.
While India’s mobile user base decreased to 913 million in third quarter, China added 38 million users to reach 1100 million.
Rest of Asia Pacific (excluding China and India) added 31 million users to touch 1220 million during the period.
The net addition in western Europe and central and eastern Europe was 1 million and 6 million reaching 528 million and 619 million, respectively.
Middle East added 8 million users and touched 268 million.
Net additions in Africa were 25 million to reach 724 million.
North America has added 2 million and reached 354 million mobile users.
Ericsson said the reason for decline of around 18 million users in India in the quarter was due to an increased focus on active subscriptions, with the decline coming from the removal of inactive subscriptions.
Approximately 40 percent of all phones sold in Q3 2012 were smartphones and the growth of smartphone data traffic is expected to exceed the overall average.
Mobile data traffic doubled between Q3 2011 and Q3 2012, and is expected to grow 12 times between 2012 and 2018, driven mainly by video.
Total mobile subscriptions are expected to reach 6.6 billion in 2012 and 9.3 billion in 2018
There were an additional 13 million LTE subscriptions in Q3 2012, and numbers are predicted to reach 1.6 billion by 2018.
Ericsson’s research shows that online video is the biggest contributor to mobile traffic volumes, constituting 25 percent of total smartphone traffic and 40 percent of total tablet traffic. This puts new requirements on networks to cater for quality anywhere and anytime.
Total mobile subscriptions are expected to reach 6.6 billion by the end of 2012 and 9.3 billion by the end of 2018. These figures do not include machine-to-machine (M2M) subscriptions.
China alone accounted for about 35 percent of net additions during Q3, with about 40 million additional subscriptions. Brazil (9 million), Indonesia (7 million), and the Philippines (5 million) followed in terms of net additions.
Overall, global mobile penetration reached 91 percent in Q3 2012, and mobile subscriptions now total around 6.4 billion. Mobile subscriptions have grown by around 9 percent year-on-year and 2 percent quarter-on-quarter.
By mid-2012, LTE coverage was provided for an estimated 455 million people globally. Within five years, more than half the world’s population is expected to benefit from to LTE coverage.
