In a statement, Ovum said that: "Almost 50 per cent of respondents said that handsets would be the major driver of mobile broadband traffic, while about 25 per cent said that tablets would be the main driver of traffic. This is a significant result for tablets as this is the first time that they have been included in the survey."

In last year's survey, the netbooks/laptops category was expected to be the primary driver of mobile broadband growth. However, in this year's survey the category fell to third place.

"Operators view tablets as a more natural fit than laptops or netbooks as they have the same lifecycle, operating system and data model as smartphones," said Nicole McCormick, Senior Analyst at Ovum.

The study found that the threat from over-the-top (OTT) players, such as Google and Apple, was considered to be a "very significant" or "moderate" threat by over 80 per cent respondents. About 25 per cent believed that OTT players pose a "very significant" threat to mobile operators.