2019 will be the year of the wearable with 1bn active globally, claims Cisco
More than half a billion wearable technology products will be active in the market globally by 2019, according to Cisco’s mobile forecast.
2015's biggest wearable will likely be the Apple Watch
The UK specifically is set to see a 42 per cent rise in wearable adoption annually, a dramatic increase to the 2.8 million devices active in 2014, according to the report.
Current wearable devices generate 119mbs of data, but by 2019 the gadgets will be more sophisticated, gathering 569mbs worth of vital information.
Two thirds of the world population will own a smartphone in 2019, up by from 4.3 billion in 2014 to 5.2 billion. As a result, mobile data traffic will boom from 30 exabytes to 292 exabytes per year - the equivalent of 65 trillion Instagram photos or 6 trillion YouTube clips.
Fewer mobile users will be reliant upon 2G connections globally with 3G networks set to support 44 per cent of mobile users and 4G accommodating just over a quarter internationally. In the UK, 4G will support 88 per cent of all mobile traffic.
Doug Webster, vice president of products and solutions marketing at Cisco, said: “The ongoing adoption of more powerful mobile devices and wider deployments of emerging M2M applications, combined with broader access to faster wireless networks, will be key contributors to significant mobile traffic growth in the coming years.
“This mobile-centric environment will give service providers a new landscape of challenges and opportunities to innovatively deliver a variety of mobile services and experiences to consumers and business users as the internet of everything (IoE) continues to take shape.”
Somewhat bucking the mobile trend, Cisco predicted that Wi-Fi connections will overtake 4G for voice calls by 2018.