According to the Ericsson Mobility report of August 2015, 53 million new subscriptions were added during Q2 2015, bringing the global total to around 7.2 billion. However, the actual number of subscribers is around 4.9 billion, since many have several subscriptions. Mobile penetration was 99 percent in Q2 Mobile subscriptions are growing around 5 percent year-on-year and 0.7 percent quarter-on quarter.
India grew most during the quarter in terms of net additions (+12 million), followed by Myanmar (+5 million), Nigeria (+4 million), USA (+4 million) and Bangladesh (+3 million). WCDMA and HSPA subscriptions grew by around 50 million and LTE subscriptions increased by approximately 115 million to around 740 million. The total number of subscriptions capable of using GSM grew by 70 million, while GSM-only subscriptions declined by 80 million.
Currently the mobile subscriber base of India stands strong at 985 Million. Bharti Airtel is the leading operator with a subscriber base of 231 Million, followed by Vodafone at 185 million and Idea cellular at 162 million as of July 2015 figures released by COAI.
The number of mobile broadband subscriptions grew by around 140 million in Q2 2015 to reach around 3.1 billion. This reflects a year-on-year increase of around 25 percent. Data traffic grew around 15 percent quarter-on-quarter and 55 percent year-on-year. It should be noted that there are large differences in traffic levels between markets, regions and operators. The growth in data traffic is being driven by the rise of mobile data subscriptions, along with a continued increase in average data volume per subscription.
Also read: AUSPI releases subscription data for June 2015, Reliance Communications added most users
Around 340 million smartphones were sold in Q2 2015. This device represented more than 75 percent of all mobile phones sold in Q2 2015, compared to around 65 percent in Q2 2014. Of all mobile phone subscriptions, around 45 percent are associated with smartphones, leaving considerable room for further uptake.
