It's not just China that is seeing a slowdown in smartphone growth. In the U.S. overall smartphone growth fell to less than 10
percent for the first time since the start of the mobile revolution. That's according to a CTIA report which found that minutes of phone use and text messaging barely inched higher in 2015. One statistic that did show massive year-over-year growth —
mobile data use — is something of a given and necessitates huge capital
spending by carriers even as monthly bills remain roughly flat. On that
front, Americans consumed 9.6 trillion megabytes of data, up from 4.1
trillion megabytes in 2014. CTIA's annual wireless industry survey develops industry-wide
information drawn from operational member and non-member wireless
service providers. It has been conducted since January 1985, originally
as a cellular-only survey instrument, and now including PCS, ESMR, AWS
and 700 MHz license holders. No break-out of results specific to
spectrum bands or licenses is performed. Previously a semi-annual
survey, it is now released annually. The information solicited from the service providers includes: direct
employment, number of cell sites, total service revenues, capital
investment and other metrics. The CTIA survey also develops information on the number of reported
wireless subscriber units or "connections" for the responding systems,
and an estimated total wireless connections figure (taking into account
non-responding systems). Can the increase in data usage offset the slowdown in new smartphone shipments in 2017? Share your predictions with the Smartphone and Tablet Zone: http://smartphoneandtabletzone.blogspot.com/
