Validas released some highlights from their study on wireless data consumption from US carriers. It uses data drawn from consumer bills from 2009-2010. They did not provide that much detail but the highlights are pretty interesting to note. The one that they are really surprised about is that Verizon Wireless smartphones consumer more data than AT&T iPhone users.
The study seems to exclude BlackBerrys due to their lower data usage but it seems like newer smartphones like Android are really driving up usage. Excluding BlackBerrys and iPhones the mean consumption per user went from 139mb to 415mb. This just goes to highlight that carriers really need to step up their upgrades to handle the higher demand. It also explains why all of them are heading towards usage based pricing.
Check out the highlights of the study below:
- Growth in data users from 42% to 53% of total subscribers between 2009 and 2010
- Increase in mean MB usage per user from 96.8 MB to 145.8 MB
- New Smartphones, excluding iPhone and Blackberry, drove the greatest increases in usage, with an increased mean consumption per user from 139 MBs to 415 MBs, and 87% of subscribers with usage to 94% of subscribers
- Mean data consumption among aircard users grows 8% from 1,373.3MBs to 1,485.2MBs
- Increase in data users among feature phones from 27.3% to 36.7% with an increase in mean data consumption from 46.1 MBs to 67.9 MBs
- Verizon Wireless posts the largest percentage increase in mean data usage per user from 48.2MB to 147.2 MB; increase from 33.4% to 42.9% lines with data usage
- T-Mobile second largest percentage increase in mean data usage per user, from 44.6 MB to 120.6 MB, but virtually no growth in overall percentage of lines with data usage
- Sprint increased from 36.9% of lines with data usage to 49.9%, but mean usage per user decreased from 166.5 MB to 133.4 MB due to increase in % of users consuming 50MBs or less per month
- AT&T continues to lead with 71.2% of users with data usage, up from 58.4%, with increase in mean usage per user from 111.9 MB to 149.6 MB
- VZW posted largest increase in aircard/laptop card mean usage per user, from 1.25 GB to 1.6 GB
via Validas via IntoMobile
