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Aug. 4, 2009

Early this morning, ABI Research released the results of a study that reveals data traffic will continue to increase for at least the next five years.

ABI's latest report said that the volume of mobile data sent and received every month by users around the world will exceed by a significant amount the total data traffic for all of 2008.

“The bulk of today’s traffic is generated by laptops with PC Card and USB modems, and not by iPhones or BlackBerries” says senior ABI analyst Jeff Orr.

While add-on cellular modems represented about 68 percent of traffic last year, computers with embedded 3G and 4G modems will lead in 2014 with more than 50 percent of the world’s mobile data traffic.

“The launch of new 4G services promises even more data capability as network coverage and service plans satisfy market expectations, a variety of specialized consumer electronics devices with the ability to connect anywhere will emerge,” Orr added.

ABI's report also found that global mobile data traffic surpassed 1.3 Exabytes transferred during 2008. By 2014, an average of 1.6 Exabytes will be sent and received monthly. And about 74.2 percent of the world’s mobile data traffic will be from Internet access by 2014.

By the same time, about 26 percent will come from audio and video streaming.

Peer-to-peer file sharing and VoIP contribution to overall mobile data traffic will be less than 1 percent.

It will be interesting to see if this trend holds up after the second-half of 2014.

ABI seems to think so, hinting that it even may prolong itself well into 2015 and 2016.

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Source: ABI Research.