Snapshot: Mobile Data Usage

The following are points about mobile data traffic for North America Tier 2 mobile operators:

• Four major consumption usage buckets: Media,Web/Search/Maps, Social, Utility Traffic. 

• Consumption of multimedia applications (YouTube, Netflix, and ESPN) is approximately 70% of total usage; capping of unlimited data plans has led consumers to consciously move toward using multimedia apps, mostly smartphones, while on Wi-Fi coverage.

• Utilities traffic is approximately 25% of the total data: Signaling (GTP attach, detach messages & PDP context activations) and IP control plane & session establishment traffic, initiated by smartphones; mobile carriers have been inaccurately complaining about smartphone control and signaling traffic, claiming that it is huge.

• Apple, Google & Microsoft are emerging as the smartphone OS & app store leaders: Google dominates in the mobile application eco system, both from data traffic consumption and percentage of users; Facebook is second in data traffic consumption and percentage of users.

• Most would assume that the largest percentage of video use is in the service provider space; however in actuality it is consumers that use the greatest percentage. The largest percentage of video use (70%) is on smartphone on WiFi networks.

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Ray Mota

rmota@acgresearch.net

www.acgresearch.net