IPhones Dominate Australian Mobile Data Consumption

An Australian Mobile Internet Insight report published by analytics firm, Amethon has found that browsing habits and data consumption for users of the new 3G Apple device is significantly higher than the average mobile device. The report, which provides insight into AustraliaÃ's mobile web browsing activities for August, says that the iPhone completely dominated data consumption behaviour and iPhone generated traffic was growing at nine percent per day.

The report also found that almost six times as much data was consumed during the average iPhone browsing session compared with the average mobile session - 2.07 MB versus 0.30 MB.

The report also notes the average page size for iPhone browsing is more than double the mobile average - a result that the authors of the report believe is due to iPhone users browsing the desktop versions of websites with higher-quality content than the mobile versions.

iPhone users were found to delve into sites more deeply and browse for longer than mobile and desktop users, with iPhone users browsing for 2.8 minutes, almost double the duration of average mobile users at 1.6 minutes, and even ahead of desktop users who average 2.4 minutes. Amethon believes that this statistic will change as iPhone ownership lengthens - and as the first bills arrive for iPhone owners.

"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. 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," said James Cleary, CTO of Amethon.

Other interesting facts

• iPhone site navigation was found by the report to be higher even than desktop usage and a lot higher than mobile usage. The average page views per visit for the iPhone were 73% higher than other mobiles and 30% higher than desktop browsers. However, the report interprets this activity as experiential browsing, with iPhone users trying browsing and showing off the capability to friends in their first few weeks of ownership.
• It was found that iPhone users browse at similar times of day to average mobile users; however iPhone browsing seemed to be proportionally greater in the morning, around 8am and did not exhibit as large an evening peak, between 9pm and 10pm, than the average mobile user. This morning spike could be that there are a large proportion of business users for the iPhone. Saturday seems to be 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.

"The key differences between Mobile Analytics and traditional web analytics solutions include optimised measurement of mobile web activity, ability to filter reports based on the handset type for example the iPhone, as well as measurement of data consumption," concluded James Cleary.

Posted to the site on 28th September 2008