By the end of 2024, about 6% of India's mobile subscriptions will be on 5G, says the June 2019 edition of the Ericsson Mobility Report. It also says that India had the highest average monthly data use per smartphone - 9.8 gigabytes - at the end of 2018, thanks to increasing LTE subscriptions, attractive data plans and changing video viewing habits. The report looks at the increase in the number of mobile subscriptions, data traffic, smartphone penetration and network coverage in the first quarter of 2019, and estimates likely numbers for 2024. It comes at a time when India has announced that the 5G spectrum auction will be held towards the end of the year, and suggests that 5G could be adopted faster than expected. Here are the key highlights from the report, with a focus on India and China: Mobile subscriptions Current There were around 7.9 billion mobile subscriptions globally in Q1 2019, with 44 million new subscriptions added during the quarter, representing 2% year-on-year growth. GSM/EDGE-only saw a decline in subscription numbers while LTE saw an increase, but the two technologies made up the majority of mobile subscriptions in Q1 2019 globally. GSM/EDGE-only subscriptions: Declined by 80 million in Q1 2019 LTE subscriptions: Increased by 160 million to reach 3.7 billion in Q1 2019 47% of all mobile subscriptions globally were LTE in the same period. In the first quarter of this year, China had the most net additions (+30 million), followed by Nigeria (+5 million) and the Philippines (+4…
