Got An iPhone 5s? Chances Are You're A Data Hog, Too
Owners of Apple’s iPhone 5s consume more data than all other smartphone owners, according to a recent report from JDSU. In both developed and developing markets, users of the flagship iPhone are the “hungriest” data consumers out of them all, and are munching through 20 percent more cellular data than last year’s iPhone 5 users did. You pigs.
Comparing data usage on an iPhone 5s against a benchmark user base of iPhone 3G owners, JDSU notes that iPhone 5s users living in developed markets download a mind-boggling 684 percent more cellular data. In developing markets, however, the difference is more extreme: here, iPhone 5s users are gobbling through 2,040 percent more data than iPhone 3G users. The research from both markets constitutes what JDSU is calling “unprecedented increases in uplink and downlink data demands.”
In developed markets, the fourth-generation 9.7-inch iPad is also a hungry beast, getting through more than six times the data consumed by an average iPhone 3G user, while owners of Apple’s iPhone 5 and iPhone 5c are consuming 573 and 562 percent, respectively. In terms of non-Apple smartphones, HTC Sensation and Sony Xperia SP users both consume more than six times the benchmark average data, but are still far behind the iPhone 5s.
On the other hand, users of Samsung’s Galaxy S4 are the third most-hungry data consumers in developing markets (the S4 and S II take the No. 9 and No. 10 positions, respectively, for developed markets), but Apple’s iPhone 5s is nevertheless still the hungriest of all smart devices examined.
Here’s a pair of tables, which highlight the differences between data consumption per handset for each market:
Concerning the separation of iPhone handsets, JDSU chief technology officer of Mobility (and author of the study) Dr. Michael Flanagan said:
Each new generation of iPhone has resulted in increases in data consumption of between 20–40 percent - even today when data use is common. Though interestingly, users of the more economically-priced iPhone 5c consume data in the range between that of the iPhone 4s and 5 users.
The real data hogs of the study, however, is a fraction of 4G LTE smartphone users: more than half of the 4G LTE download link data examined in JDSU’s study was downloaded by just 0.1 percent of smartphone owners. This is a more concentrated proportion than both 2011 and 2012, when half of the 3G data analyzed by similar studies was consumed by one percent of smartphone users.
Here are some more tidbits taken from JDSU’s investigation:
- iPad 4 users consume the most data - almost 40 percent more than last year’s hungriest tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1.
- iPad mini users consume 20 percent less data than third- and fourth-generation iPad users.
- The number of variety cards and dongles are rare in developing markets.
- Tablets, also, are less common in developing markets.
For the full report, head over to JDSU’s website.
Do you consider yourself a data hog, or are you more of a data piglet?
See also: AppAdvice’s Top 10 Free Jailbreak Tweaks For iOS 7 Devices, Gameloft Updates Uno & Friends With New Boosts And Other Enhancements, and As Big As It Gets: Monster Jam Gets First Ever Official Mobile Game On iOS.
