We all know that video is going to play a huge role in mobile communications in the years to come, but new data released today shows that it’s already arrived.
Bytemobile says video was the dominant form of mobile data traffic last year; it accounted for more than 40 percent of global wireless traffic in 2010. Don’t expect it to stagnate, the company says. Thanks to the improvement of video quality, the launch of more live streaming services and more two-way video communication, Bytemobile expects video to help boost mobile data traffic to an all-time high in 2011.
Specifically, look for:
- video-based content to account for more than 60 percent of network traffic;
- personal video communications to dominate wireless network capacity, such that 10 percent of subscribers consume 90 percent of total network traffic;
- next-generation smartphones to lead to the consumption of bandwidth-intensive content and subscribers to continue to consume available network capacity, even as operators roll out LTE
A study last year predicted that mobile video would drive data traffic at an amazing compound annual growth rate of 117 percent through 2015, anticipating that video would account for two-thirds of all wireless data traffic by that year.
