Global mobile penetration reached 89 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2012 with 6.3 billion mobile subscriptions, according to an interim update of the Ericsson Mobility Report.

The highest mobile penetration was seen in Central and Eastern Europe where it stood at 133 per cent, with Western Europe close behind on 128 per cent. The region with the lowest penetration was India with 56 per cent.

China meanwhile accounted for 22 per cent of net additions during the period, adding around 31 million connections. The world’s largest country by population had 1.12 billion mobile subscriptions by the end of the year.

The APAC region added a similar number of subscriptions to reach a total of 1.26 billion while Africa saw 30 million net additions to reach 754 million connections.

Mobile broadband subscriptions saw a 50 per cent year-on-year increase as 125 million new connections brought the total to 1.5 billion.

Ericsson said data traffic doubled between the fourth quarters of 2011 and 2012 while quarter-on-quarter growth was up 28 per cent.

Significantly, although there were 6.3 billion subscriptions at the end of the quarter — a nine per cent year-on-year growth — there were only 4.4 billion individual subscribers due to people owning multiple devices.