iPhone users consume six times more data: report

iPhone users in Australia consume six times more data than the average mobile user, according to a new study.

The Australian Mobile Internet Insight found that during the average iPhone browsing session, users consumed 2.07 MB compared to 0.30 MB for other mobile users.

The report also found that the average page size for iPhone browsing is more than double the mobile average, which the report attributes to iPhone users browsing desktop versions of websites.

iPhone users browse individual sites for an average of 2.8 minutes, compared to average mobile users at 1.6 minutes, and even ahead of desktop users who average 2.4 minutes.

“Proud new iPhone owners are very likely to be surprised by incredibly high data usage, because of the quantity of data consumed with their heavy web browsing,” said James Cleary, CTO of Amethon.

“Our belief is that many will adjust their browsing habits as the novelty wears off and some may upgrade their current plan to allow them more data usage,” he said.

iPhone users browse at similar times of day to average users; however iPhone browsing seemed to be proportionally greater around 8am, but proportionally lower between the evening peak of 9-10pm, which Cleary attributes to the high number of business users.

Saturdays are the peak browsing day for both iPhone and average mobile users, due to heavy usage of weekend sports content.

iPhone users were found to be almost twenty times more likely to use desktop versions of web search engines than the average mobile user who is predominantly using the mobile version, at 97 per cent versus 43.6 per cent for mobile.

Google dominates as the main source of mobile search, with 95.5 per cent of the share with Yahoo! a distant second at just 3.5 per cent. For the iPhone users, Google is even more popular with 97 per cent of the market and Yahoo! with only 2.9 per cent of the share.

Sydney-based Amethon used its Mobile Analytics product to prepare the first Mobile Internet Insight report, based on aggregated data from several hundred mobile and conventional websites.

This report draws on data aggregated from Amethon’s global client base with a specific focus on providing insight into Australia’s mobile web browsing activities for the first two weeks of August 2008.

The number of global mobile browsing sessions analysed by Amethon’s Mobile Analytics technology during the month of August is more than 5 million. More than 80 percent of visitors to Australian sites are from Australia.

The amount of mobile traffic in the global data set is more than 100 million page views. The report represents browsing and download traffic only and does not include streaming or P2P data.