Ericsson predicts totally networked society by 2015

Jan 12, 2012, 0:57 GMT

Las Vegas - About 92 per cent of the world's population will have mobile coverage by 2015, Ericsson president and CEO Hans Vestberg said Wednesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Currently some 85 per cent of the world's population representing some 6 billion people are covered by broadband. With increasing numbers of those mobile users also able to access broadband internet, 'society will be transformed, industries will be transformed, and our lives will be transformed' by innovations such as location-based services, Vestberg said in a keynote address at the world's largest electronics show.

Vestberg predicted that the vast majority of new internet users would access the web on mobile devices, and predicted that there would be 5 billion mobile broadband users by 2015.

Vestberg said that this switch to smartphones had dramatically transformed the way people use mobile networks. Just 26 percent of the time on smartphones is spent making voice-to-voice calls, while nearly three-fourths of smartphone use involves surfing the Internet, watching media, playing games, and other non-voice activities.

Vestberg said that intelligent, real-time communications between devices would lead the next stage of the internet revolution.

'Anything that benefits from being connected, will be connected in the future,' Vestberg said. 'When you start to use the combination of software, sensors, and hardware, then you can improve processes and enable new ideas to turn into business. The result will be greater than anyone can imagine.'