WIRELESS AND MOBILE NEWS

A  Validas' wireless data study, shows that Verizon Wireless smartphones are consuming more wireless data than AT&T iPhones by a ratio of roughly 1.25:1. Average monthly wireless data consumption for Verizon Wireless Smartphones is 421 megabytes per month, versus 338 megabytes per month for iPhones.

Nearly twice as many Verizon Wireless Smartphone users are consuming 500 megabytes to 1 gigabyte per month compared to AT&T iPhone users with more than 11 percent of Verizon Smartphone users fall into this category, versus just 5.6 percent of iPhone users. AT&T users on the other hand, 71.2% of users use data u, up from 58.4%, with increase in mean usage per user from 111.9 MB to 149.6 MB.

The data numbers will probably grow greater after the figures from the Droid X come in.  A Verizon rep reported that Droid X users, use five times more data.  There are many features of the Droid X that cause the vast data consumption including BlockBuster Video on Demand.

Validas also finds that slightly more than 54 percent of VZW Smartphones consume less than 200 MB per month, versus slightly more than 52 percent of iPhones. Nearly 46 percent of VZW Smartphones consume more than 200 MB per month, versus nearly 48 percent of iPhones. But, more than 4 percent of VZW Smartphones consume more than 2 gigabytes per month, as opposed to just 1.6 percent of iPhones. Only 2/10ths of 1 percent of both VZW Smartphones and iPhones use more than 5 GBs per month. Further, a nearly even percentage of users consume no data at all in a given month - 3.4 percent for Verizon Wireless Smartphones versus 2.9 percent for AT&T iPhones.

Verizon Wireless currently only offers unlimited data plans and has been hinting that capped plans will be coming for LTE.

The data for this analysis was derived from more than 20,000 consumer wireless bills dated between January and May of 2010. "Smartphones" deliberately excludes BlackBerry devices which, due to data compression techniques, do not follow similar data consumption patterns to those of iPhones and other Smartphones.

More Validas Data about Data:

Growth in data users from 42% to 53% of total subscribers between 2009 and 2010.
• Increase in mean MB usage per user from 96.8 MB to 145.8 MB.
• New Smartphones, excluding iPhone and Blackberry, drove the greatest increases in usage, with an increased mean consumption per user from 139 MBs to 415 MBs, and 87% of subscribers with usage to 94% of subscribers.
• Mean data consumption among aircard users grows 8% from 1,373.3MBs to 1,485.2MBs
• Increase in data users among feature phones from 27.3% to 36.7% with an increase in mean data consumption from 46.1 MBs to 67.9 MBs.
• Verizon Wireless posts the largest percentage increase in mean data usage per user from 48.2MB to 147.2 MB; increase from 33.4% to 42.9% lines with data usage.
• T-Mobile second largest percentage increase in mean data usage per user, from 44.6 MB to 120.6 MB, but virtually no growth in overall percentage of lines with data usage.
• Sprint increased from 36.9% of lines with data usage to 49.9%, but mean usage per user decreased from 166.5 MB to 133.4 MB due to increase in % of users consuming 50MBs or less per month.
• AT&T continues to lead with 71.2% of users with data usage, up from 58.4%, with increase in mean usage per user from 111.9 MB to 149.6 MB.
• VZW posted largest increase in aircard/laptop card mean usage per user, from 1.25 GB to 1.6 GB