GigaOM Pro

Rather than wade through all the iPad rumors today to separate the wheat from the chaff, I’ll direct your attention to Kevin Fitchard’s solid piece examining Cisco’s latest forecast for mobile data consumption. While Cisco has been criticized for over-hyping the mobile data explosion, it has ratcheted its latest forecast up, predicting a 78 percent compound annual growth rate in traffic over the next five years. Much of that growth is expected to come from tablets, which are a far better platform for consuming data-rich content than even the best smartphones. But I’m still skeptical that tablets will fuel data traffic over cellular networks as dramatically as smartphones have, because A) data price plans are so expensive and B) most users don’t view cellular connectivity as a must-have on their tablets.