African online video consumption to increase by 55% – Ericsson CEO

Ericsson in its Consumer Lab Report has predicted that African online video consumption would increase by 55% per year until the end of 2019.

Speaking at the ongoing 2015 Mobile World Congress holding in Barcelona, Chief Executive Officer of Ericsson, Hans Vestberg, told international Technology Reporters more people would use broadband to view stream video content as a result growing demand for video.

He said that there are already 2.9 billion mobile broadband subscribers in the world with the last billion added in less than two years.

Reflecting on the pace of change in the industry during the briefing, he highlighted on the latest solutions that the company is bringing to market, while making predictions for 2015.

He assured that the company’s solution on showcase would support operator needs across network evolution, IT transformation and opportunities for innovation and revenue growth

Explaining how Ericsson is enabling change-makers in the Networked Society, he said that, “We predict four key changes during 2015: more people will watch streamed, on-demand video than broadcast TV on a weekly basis.

Hans Vestberg. Image: Ericsson

“Video will generate half of the mobile data traffic; LTE subscriber growth will exceed 80 percent; and world mobile broadband coverage will be above 70 percent. This all are massive forces of change and open up new opportunities both in the ICT industry and in other industries.

“There is a new logic being applied across industries. We can see a definite shift from physical products to digital services. New business models are emerging, along with new ways of solving old problems that create new efficiencies.

“True customer intimacy can be created using digital tools. All in all, you can see that ICT drives transformation that is really changing the game.”