Mobile data traffic is expected to grow ten-fold by 2016, according to research published by Ericsson. The firm said that this rise will be driven by a combination of emerging markets gaining better access to smartphones and mature markets using services that rely on mobile broadband more extensively.

The firm’s research showed that mobile broadband subscriptions grew by 60 per cent year-on-year in 2011 and is expected to grow from 900m this year to almost five billion subscribers in 2016. Meanwhile, total smartphone traffic is expected to triple during 2011 alone.

According to Patrick Cerwall, director of strategic marketing at Ericsson, there is strong momentum for smartphone uptake in all regions, and the traffic generated by connected PCs and tablet devices will match that generated by smartphones.

“A smartphone might use up to 700MB per month in traffic, while a mobile PC or tablet could generate from 1GB to as much as 7GB,” he said.

He added that the usage pattern of tablets is similar to smartphones but there will be fewer tablets than smartphones. In fact, in terms of the overall amount of subscriptions per device type, mobile PCs and tablets will make up just a tenth of the total devices contributing to mobile broadband traffic.

However, Cerwall claimed that tablets will definitely play a big role in this rise in mobile data traffic, due to their capabilities.

“Online video is something you might use more on a tablet, but the big difference with mobile PCs is that you’ll probably see a lot of file-sharing and software downloads, and that sort of thing comes into the picture as you download much more.”