Global data traffic topped voice traffic on a monthly basis last year and the total traffic across the world exceeded an exabyte for the first time in 2009.

Total mobile data traffic, which includes SMS text messaging,  also topped mobile voice traffic in the United States last year for the first time, according to a report just released by Chetan Sharma, a strategist in the mobile industry.

An exabyte is one quintillion bytes, or one billion gigabytes. Chetan Sharma, who counts AT&T and China Mobile as clients, says North America and Western Europe's mobile data markets are growing so rapidly they each should exceed an exabyte in 2010.

Sharma expects 2010 to be the first year that mobile broadband connections would exceed fixed broadband connections globally.

The report said that overall telecom revenues stayed flat last year, largely due to the worldwide recession. The good news is that, unlike in many other industries, they didn’t decline.

The top ten nations by overall revenues were: U.S., China, Japan, France, Italy, UK, Germany, Brazil, Spain and India.  By data revenues alone the top ten were: U.S. Japan, China, U.K., Italy, Germany, France, Australia, Spain and Korea.

Though India fell off the list when it came to data revenues, it's one of the two top countries - the other being China - growing fastest in new mobile subscribers. Growth in subscriptions represents a modernizing of emerging markets, but ARPUs are low compared to mature markets. The top 10 nations in terms of the number of mobile subscriptions are China, India, U.S., Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Germany, Pakistan and Italy.

The only mobile companies worldwide that are bringing in $50 million or more in revenues are China Mobile, Vodafone, AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless.  However, many more companies have 100 million-plus subscribers.

Internationally, the total number of app downloads hit $7 billion; bringing in $4.1 billion in revenues. Asia had the largest percentage of downloads, but North Americans accounted for more than 50% of the app revenue.
While text messaging still accounts for the majority of data traffic, its supremacy is being eroded by music, television and video streaming, voice navigation, games, web surfing and other things.

And Apple, RIM and Google are battling it out internationally for mobile phone share, though Nokia still has the largest percentage, though it is shrinking.

Image credits:  Chetan Sharma Consulting