A new research report from JDSU has revealed that owners of the iPhone 5s are gobbling up 20 percent more data compared to people who own an iPhone 5. This means that for every five megabytes (or gigabytes) of cellular data consumed by an iPhone 5 owner, an additional megabyte (or gigabyte) gets guzzled up by an iPhone 5s owner.
In fact, looking at the list of top ten devices that downloaded most data in 2013, Apple’s iOS gadgets took six slots. I’m guessing Tim Cook is smiling as we speak for this survey is another sign of Apple’s devices getting far more actual use compared to Android-driven handsets, Android’s lead in terms of sheer volume notwithstanding…
The iPhone 5s owners are the hungriest data consumers, having downloaded 20 percent more data than iPhone 5 users in developed markets and 50 percent more data in developing markets throughout 2013. The survey examined the data demands of 2+ million subscribers across 150 different devices over a 24-hour weekday in major European markets and developing markets.
iPhone 5s owners have been found to suck down 41 percent more data than owners of Samsung’s Galaxy S4 flagship in developed markets, or 54 percent more data in developing markets. The survey characterized iPhone 5s owners as the most voracious smartphone users with “unprecedented increases in uplink and downlink data demands”.
According to JDSU data obtained by TechCrunch, the iPhone 4s/5/5s/5c and third and fourth-generation iPad took six out of the top ten slots in terms of cellular data mobile devices downloaded last year.
“We’ve seen that each new generation of iPhone users drives an increase in data consumption of between 20-40 percent,” the survey noted.
The iPhone 5s and iPad 4 were the top two devices in terms of data consumption, followed by the Android-based HTC Sensation and Sony’s Xperia SP. The iPad Air is not included because it went on sale last November, when the data was being gathered.
Users of the latest iPhone 5s consume more downlink data than any other smartphone users in both markets under study, consuming almost seven times and twenty times as much as the benchmark iPhone 3G users.
This is consistent with the trend seen over the past three years where users of the flagship iPhone devices were the most data-hungry smartphone users. As in past years, we are not in a position to directly identify the root causes of this data consumption.
It’s astounding that only one percent of cellular users gobbled up as much as half of all cellular data downloaded in 2013. The top percent of device owners consumed 90 percent of downloaded data.
Owners of LTE devices downloaded more data than those who own non-LTE gear while the iPhone 5c and iPad mini owners used less data than people who own Apple’s higher-end mobile devices.