Global 5G subscriptions have crossed three billion for the first time, according to Ericsson's second-quarter 2026 earnings report, while the company warned that AI hyperscalers are hoarding the same memory chips used in its base stations, pushing component costs higher. Mobile data traffic grew 22 percent year-over-year in the first quarter of 2026, with nearly half of all global mobile traffic now running over 5G infrastructure. The 3.1 billion subscription figure was reached after 162 million new subscribers joined in just the first quarter of 2026. Ericsson's 2019 forecast had projected 2.6 billion 5G subscriptions by 2025. More than 390 service providers have launched commercial 5G services globally, with over 90 deploying 5G Standalone. Ericsson projects subscriptions will reach 6.4 billion by the end of 2031. CEO Börje Ekholm flagged that the global build-out of AI data centers is consuming memory and specialized chip supply that Ericsson also relies on. Three manufacturers—SK hynix, Samsung, and Micron—control more than 95 percent of global DRAM production, and starting in 2025, they began reallocating capacity toward high-bandwidth memory (HBM), which AI accelerators require. HBM demand grew 130 percent year-over-year in 2025.