At the rate at which the adoption of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets is growing worldwide, it won’t be long before they outnumber the population of human beings on this Earth. The latest research conducted by the network equipment supplier Cisco (News - Alert) suggests that it might happen this year. The Cisco research, according to Digital Trends, indicates that sometime this year there will be more mobile devices on the planet than humans. That means there will be some 7 billion mobile devices in the hands of consumers. This is because majority of consumers carry more than one device.

This trend will continue. In fact, the Cisco study shows that the consumption in the emerging markets will grow even faster with many users carrying both a smartphone and a tablet, wrote Digital Trends reporter Trevor Mogg.

According to Cisco, the study predicts that by 2016 there will be more than 10 billion mobile-connected devices among an expected world population of some 7.3 billion people, wrote Mogg.  

While it sounds good, it also means more challenges to keep such a vast number of devices connected all the time, according to Cisco. Hence, the study cautions that any upcoming challenges must be addressed in a timely manner to ensure that the mobile communications system works efficiently, wrote Mogg.  

Furthermore, the Cisco study also focuses on faster networks, which tend to create their own set of challenges as data traffic explodes. For instance, according to Cisco, 4G currently only accounts for 0.2 percent of mobile connections but is responsible for percent percent of mobile data traffic, Mogg wrote. Plus, added Cisco, a 4G connection generates 28 times more data traffic than a non-4G connection, wrote Mogg. And this trend will further drive data traffic even higher as next generation iPads and smartphones emerge, explains Cisco in this study.

As per the Digital Trends report, Cisco study foresees some 100 million smartphone users by the year-end generating more than 1 GB of mobile data traffic each month. And in next couple of years, that number could be several times higher, reports Mogg.

The Digital Trends report quoted Suraj Shetty’s (News - Alert), vice-president of products and solutions at Cisco, comments to BBC News, as saying, “By 2016, 60 percent of mobile users – three billion people worldwide – will belong to the gigabyte club.”