The Mobile Economy : impressive numbers !

Today, mobile operators alone directly contribute 1.4 per cent of global GDP, according to the GSMA’s newly released report “The Mobile Economy”. Moreover, in 2012, more than eight million people were employed directly in the mobile ecosystem, a 17 per cent increase from

2008. Last year, the mobile industry pumped approximately US$490 billion globally into public funds – a 32 per cent increase from 2008.

Today, 3.2 billion people have at least one mobile phone or mobile connected device and that figure is set to climb to 3.9 billion by the end of 2017.

The advent of the smartphone, combined with the widespread deployment of mobile broadband

networks, has led to an explosion in mobile data traffic. 

Staggeringly, mobile data traffic volumes in 2012 alone were higher than all the previous years combined and are set to grow at a CAGR of 66 per cent a year for the next five years.

To meet this demand, the mobile industry will invest over US$1.1 trillion in CAPEX through 2017.

Today, we have more than 1.6 billion mobile broadband connections and this is set to rise to 5.1 billion by the end of 2017. Fourth-generation highspeed LTE technology is coming to the fore, with the 62 million connections today expected to grow to 920 million in 2017.