Worldwide mobile connections will reach 5.6 billion in 2011, up 11% from 5 billion connections in 2010, according to a report.
The Gartner report also said mobile data services revenue will total $314.7 billion in 2011, a 22.5% increase from 2010 revenue of $257 billion.
“Mobile data traffic will increase significantly as more people will have access to mobile data networks, there is a migration toward smartphones and an increase in sales of media tablets," said Jessica Ekholm, principal research analyst at Gartner. “Mobile data volumes will continue to grow as mobile data networks become faster and more ubiquitous, while at the same time the number of data users and data usage per user is expected to grow.”
Worldwide mobile connections will reach 5.6 billion in 2011 with almost 2.5 billion of those will be in Asia Pacific. Worldwide mobile connections will experience steady growth through 2015 when mobile connections are forecast to reach 7.4 billion, and mobile data revenue will reach $552 billion. Global mobile data traffic is expected to grow 26-fold between 2010 and 2015, while revenue is expected to double.
Gartner expects communications service providers (CSPs) to increasingly start moving toward offering more flexible and more personalized data plans, which should help capture a larger mobile data user base.