A couple of days ago I started my analysis of this year's report of the German telecoms regulator (RegTP) with a first post on that we are past "peak telephony". The report also clearly lays out that we are past the "human subscription peak" as well.
10 years ago in 2004 there were 89 million mobile subscriptions in Germany. The peak was seen back in 2011 with 142 million subscriptions. Since then the number of subscriptions have gone up and down a few millions year on year and in 2014, 139 million subscriptions were counted. In other words there is no growth anymore despite the push for mobile devices in addition to smartphones such as a tablets that also have cellular connectivity.
So should we see growth in this area in the future again it will probably come from other areas. Machine to machine for example. In other words the number of SIM cards might from now on be a good indicator of how much and how fast non-human machine communication gains traction.