5G to Drastically Help Storage Industry

Average smartphone storage usage at 5.6GB/month in 2018, 21GB/month in 2024

The move from 4G to 5G drastically helps the storage industry.

According to a recent survey, 5G consumer potential, from Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, Swedish company deeply involved in 5G, average world smartphone usage in 2018 stood at 5.6GB/month and is expected to increase to 21GB/month in 2024, an increase of roughly 4 times from today’s usage.

Stastica, on its side, reports that there was 2.53 billion of smartphones users in the world in 2018 – 1.4 billion for IDC -. This means 142TB/month, and consequently this figure will increase to 532TB/month in 2024, or an astronomical figure of 6EB/year, to be stored somewhere, into smartphones on flash memories and/or some storage devices and/or cloud.

Of today’s mobile data usage, 60% comes from video consumption. 5G offers the capabilities for video to evolve from its current state into more immersive formats.

Smartphone users estimate that overall video viewing across mobile or portable screens while being out of home will increase by around 3 hours per week – from 6.5 to 9 hours – in the next 5 years, of which 1 hour will be on AR/VR glasses by 2025.

Average monthly cellular data usage for a smartphone user in North America today is 8.6GB and is set to reach 50GB by the end of 2024. However, just 10 minutes of AR app usage each day could translate to 50GB/month/user.

The current self-reported mobile data usage among survey respondents averaged around 8GB/month. Consumers self-report an average increase of 4 times with 5G, resulting in approximately 39GB/month of cellular data traffic per user on a 5G device. On average, half of all smartphone users expect their mobile cellular data usage to increase over 5G.

However, when we look at the applications and services consumers expect to be using on 5G, especially immersive video like AR and VR, and estimate the average monthly mobile cellular data traffic per user, it results in 83GB/month, an increase of 10 times from current usage of our survey respondents. This suggests that consumers underestimate the impact of immersive media usage on their own future mobile cellular data usage. With average global smartphone usage in 2018 at 5.6GB/month, this could be an increase of 14 times compared to current usage.

With a 5G device, 1 in 5 could use 215GB of data per month in the US, while in South Korea this could reach 250GB, and around 140GB in the UK. Average usage of 200GB/month is easily possible if one were to assume current mobile cellular data usage and add mobile cellular data consumed when using 1 hour of 360-degree video, 1 hour of VR on the move, 1 hour using AR maps and 4 hours of video streaming in 4K a month.

Consumers of smartphones are are waiting anxiously on the arrival of 5G. They say that they are ready do pay a premium of 20% to get it.

Quantitative data for this Ericsson’s survey was collected from 22 countries. Over 35,000 online interviews were held with people aged 15-69 in Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Belgium, Canada, China, Chile, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, India, Italy, Indonesia, South Korea, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Uruguay, the UAE, the UK and the US. All respondents are smartphone owners and use the internet on a daily basis. This study is representative of the opinions of 1 billion smartphone users globally.