Mobile Economy 2019 & Forecasts - GSMA

5G is going to become the new Distribution vehicle or #Infratecture for most products and services. If those decision makers in power could see even that short distance ahead they would roll out basic 4G across the country and stop faffing about with costly domestic fibre.

This is the Executive Summary from the 2019 GSMA Report with forecasts to 2025

5G is here: opportunity awaits

IoT: between 2018 and 2025, the number of global IoT connections will triple to 25 billion, while global IoT revenue will quadruple to $1.1 trillion

Content: the content sector is undergoing significant transformation driven by shifting consumer behaviour, new players and changing content production and distribution models. To benefit from an unprecedented level of content consumption, an increasing number of telecoms operators are entering the content space or strengthening their
existing content offerings, through vertical integration, partnerships with OTT video service providers or creating content themselves.

Artificial intelligence: AI will be key to future business and digital transformation. It will drive increasingly autonomous and intelligent networks and improve customer experience through greater learning of customer
behaviour.

Devices: while their ubiquity means smartphones remain the focal point of the consumer internet economy, the range of connected devices (and therefore internet access channels) is greater than ever. In the most advanced countries, today’s digital consumers (using PCs and smartphones) will likely become tomorrow’s augmented
customers, adopting emerging technologies such as AI (via smart speakers) and immersive reality.

By the end of 2018, 5.1 billion people around the world subscribed to mobile services, accounting for 67% of the global population. A total of 1 billion new subscribers have been added in the four years since 2013 (representing an average annual growth rate of 5%), but the speed of growth is slowing. An average annual growth rate of 1.9% between 2018 and 2025 will bring the total number of mobile subscribers to 5.8 billion (71% of the population).

Of the 710 million people expected to subscribe to mobile services for the first time over the next seven years, half will come from the Asia Pacific region and just under a quarter will come from Sub-Saharan Africa.