Ericsson: Mobile data traffic to increase 10X by 2016

Global mobile data traffic will increase ten-fold by between 2011 and 2016, mainly driven by mobile video, according to a new forecast from Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC). The Swedish vendor, which is the world's largest supplier of network equipment and thus has a vested interest in increased data traffic, said that mobile broadband connections are expected to grow from 900 million in 2011 to almost 5 billion in 2016. Most interestingly, Ericsson predicted that by 2016, users living on less than 1 percent of the Earth's total land area--primarily in highly concentrated urban areas--are set to generate around 60 percent of the world's total mobile traffic. Ericsson's forecast is less than what Cisco Systems predicted in its annual Visual Networking Index Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast. That forecast, from February, predicted global mobile data traffic will grow 26 times between 2010 and 2015. Release