Think exabytes!

At the moment I am a happy owner of 5 terabyte of external storage for all my rich media files, text files and  what not. Until recently, I thought that would suffice for the coming decades. Unfortunately, that is not the case. By the year 2016 I will probably have to upgrade to exabytes (1018 bytes). If you take into account that, increasingly, our lives will evolve around multiple online presences and mobile interaction I expect that the number, and moreover the size, of files will increase as well. Cisco research (2012) came up with mind-boggling increase in mobile traffic data. Similar applies to data exchange over the web.
Additionally, network speed will improve dramatically with the slowly but surely implemented glass-fiber networks throughout the western world and in Asia. In this blog post, however, I will focus on mobile traffic increase exclusively.

“Western Europeans are embracing the mobile phone as an e-commerce platform. Based on current data, the report projects that the €1.7 billion in mobile spending seen last year will grow eleven fold to €19.2 billion in 2017, accounting for 6.8% of overall online sales.” (Forrester’s first European Mobile Commerce forecast, Tuesday 17 July 2012)

It's going to be mobile, mobile, mobile:

·         Monthly global mobile data traffic will surpass 10 exabytes in 2016.

·         Over 100 million smartphone users will belong to the "gigabyte club" (over 1 GB per month) by 2012.

·         The number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the world's population in 2012.

·         The average mobile connection speed will surpass 1 Mbps in 2014.

·         Due to increased usage on smartphones, handsets will exceed 50 percent of mobile data traffic in 2014.

·         Monthly global mobile data traffic will surpass 10 exabytes in 2016.

·         Monthly mobile tablet traffic will surpass 1 exabyte per month in 2016.

·         Tablets will exceed 10 percent of global mobile data traffic in 2016.

·         China will exceed 10 percent of global mobile data traffic in 2016.

Benchmark mobile Netherlands

A Cisco 2011 benchmark study after 20 Dutch sites showed that 7.5% of total online visits is generated through mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets and mobile music players. The sites involved cover sectors such as e-commerce (online stores), news, entertainment, travel, and education. Together they account for 5 million visitors per month. 

In comparison, 2010 showed that the average number of visits through the mobile channel to the same 20 Dutch sites was only 2.2%

Finally, 2012 shows a dramatic triple fold increase adding up to 10% of total online visits to the same 20 sites through the mobile  channel. This increase makes the mobile channel one to reckon with in online marketing and proves how avalanche like data traffic, in this case through the mobile channel, can grow in just one year.

Top 4 mobile devices worldwide

1. iPad (48%)
2. iPhone (25%)
3. Android (21%)
4. Blackberry OS (1.6%).

Top 5 mobile devices in the Netherlands 

1.   iPhone  38,9%
2. iPad  22,8% (waarvan er minimaal 100.000 actief zijn in Nederland)
3. Android  12,7% 
4. Blackberry 9,6%
5.  iPod 7,2%

Not sure what all the bits, bobs, and bytes etc entail?
Visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exabyte