A new study from iGR has forecast that global mobile data traffic will increase approximately 15 fold by 2020.

According to the report, mobile data traffic worldwide is projected to hit 39 million terabytes (TB) per month at the start of the next decade. That figure represents an exponential increase over the 2.5 million TB iGR estimates was consumed each month in 2015.

iGR said the massive growth will be fueled by increased subscriber use of mobile video and cloud applications as well as an increase in the number of mobile data subscribers. Growth will occur in both developing and marture markets, iGR said.

Additionally, iGR said continued network rollouts – including 3G expansion in developing markets and LTE and LTE-Advanced upgrades in mature markets – cheaper smartphones and a trend toward consuming cloud content will all factor into data traffic growth.

A separate iGR study forecast the decrease in the cost of smartphone will also lead to an increased prevalence of the devices. By 2020, iGR said smartphones will account for more than 98 percent of all handset sales.