There will be 4.5 billion mobile telephone subscribers world-wide by 2010, Swedish telecommunications equipment maker Ericsson forecast on May 9. "The mobile subscription for 2010 will be 4.5 billion. It is our market estimate," an Ericsson spokeswoman told AFP, confirming an estimate given earlier by president and chief executive officer Carl-Henric Svanberg.
At present, there are around three billion mobile telephone users in the world, the spokeswoman said.
Svanberg told a meeting in Stockholm that the growth in the number of mobile users had been "stronger than ever anticipated," the Thomson Financial News agency reported.
Regarding the volume of voice and data traffic via mobile phones, the Ericsson spokeswoman said: "We see a 10-fold growth by 2012."