• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, August 4, 2011

Worldwide mobile connections will reach 5.6 billion this year, up 11% from 5 billion connections in 2010, and hit 7.4 billion by 2015, according to a new Gartner forecast. Mobile data services revenue will grow 22% to $314.7 billion, and reach $552 billion in four years.

"Mobile data traffic will increase significantly as more people will have access to mobile data networks, there is a migration toward smartphones and an increase in sales of media tablets," said Jessica Ekholm, principal research analyst at Gartner. But slower growth rates for data revenue over time will lead to an increase in network costs for carriers as they try to maintain growing data traffic, the research firm noted.

Gartner expects communications service providers (CSPs) to move toward offering more flexible and more personalized data plans, which should help capture a larger mobile data user base. At the same time, providers have upgraded their networks by offering faster download and upload speeds, helping improve the general perception of data quality and increasing data uptake. Read more here.