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US smartphone owners double data usage
Data consumption by US smartphone owners has nearly doubled in the last year, with users gobbling up 435MB of data per month on average, according to Nielsen. The research firm says that average data usage is up from 230MB per month a year, an increase of 89%, adding that consumption is "growing at an astounding pace". Nielsen attributes the growth to "app-friendly" operating systems such as Google's Android and Apple's iOS, as well as the relative cheapness of data.
Given that the number of smartphone owners is also growing, the level of data consumption will have implications for carriers. Currently, 37% of all US mobile owners are smartphone users, with iPhone and Android users numbering among the most data-hungry. This rate of growth is increasing more rapidly than the cost of providing data is falling - halving from USD0.14 to USD0.8 per megabyte on average - with the major carriers adjusting their pricing plans accordingly. Where users previously had the freedom of unlimited data usage, carriers have now introduced tiered pricing plans in order to cope with demand. However, with the popularity of data-heavy services such as video chat and streaming on the rise, more carriers may need to adjust their pricing structures. While Nielsen did not specify which data-driven services smartphone users favoured, research from Bytemobile earlier this year indicated that video would account for 60% of all mobile data traffic in 2011.
Nielsen's report says that iPhone and Android users were the heaviest users, consuming on average 492MB and 582MB respectively per month. The firm also noted that Windows 7 users had also doubled their data consumption, due to the increase in apps available on the operating system. Globally, smartphone shipments are set to reach 472m this year and nearly 1bn by 2015, according to IDC.
