The number of mobile subscriptions will exceed the world's population by next year, but the geographic LTE subscription divide will widen, Ericsson has predicted.
The vendor's latest Mobility Report estimates that there were 6.8 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide in Q1.
It projects that by 2015 the number of subscriptions will exceed the population, and by the end of 2019 subscriptions will reach 9.2 billion.
By this time, there will be an estimated 7.6 billion mobile broadband subscriptions, representing around 80% of total subscriptions - up from around 30% in 2013.
LTE is predicted to account for 2.6 billion total subscriptions by end-2019, or around 30% of total subscriptions. But Ericsson projects that there will be a wide gap between regions in terms of LTE subscription penetration.
LTE penetration levels in North East Asia are expected to be just 45%, compared to 85% in North America. Europe will have an even lower LTE penetration rate of 30%, Ericsson said.
Also by 2019, China is expected to reach over 700 million LTE subscriptions, representing more than 25% of total global subscriptions for LTE.
Ericsson meanwhile projects that by 2016, the number of smartphone subscriptions will exceed those for basic phones and that by 2019 the number of smartphone subscriptions will reach 5.6 billion. Smartphones already handily outsold feature phones in Q1, accounting for 65% of handset sales.
The average smartphone user of 2019 is expected to consume four times the amount of data as the average user today, the report adds. Mobile data traffic is on pace to grow tenfold between 2013 and 2019.