iPhone 5s users consume unprecedented data levels; large screen smartphones drive heavy data use

“According to a large-scale survey of mobile data consumption in 2013 conducted by JDSU,” Natasha Lomas reports for TechCrunch, “the most data thirsty phone users of all have an iPhone 5s burning a hole in their pocket. As with the 2012 study, the 2013 survey examined the data demands of more than one million subscribers using more than 150 different devices over a single, 24-hour weekday in a Tier-1 European market, which had a mixture of urban and suburban morphologies. But for the first time the survey also studied a developing market for comparative purposes — with a further one million+ subscribers studied in this market over the same 24-hour period.”

“Continuing the trend of the past three years’ findings, the 2013 study found that mobile subscribers using Apple’s flagship smartphone are the most data-hungry smartphone users of all. And they’re getting hungrier still: users of the new iPhone 5s are even more data-hungry than previous top-of-the-line iPhone owners — with the study describing them as the most voracious smartphone users it’s yet seen, with ‘unprecedented increases in uplink and downlink data demands,'” Lomas reports. “According to the findings, iPhone 5s users demand 7x as much data as iPhone 3G users in developed markets (the study uses the iPhone 3G as its mid-range benchmark device), and 20x as much data in developing markets. The most data-demanding device in 2013 was the iPhone 5 — but iPhone 5s users are demanding a fifth (20%) more data than iPhone 5 users in developed markets, and 50% more data in developing markets.”

“Another characteristic of mobile data consumption detailed by the study applies to the hungriest 1% of all subscribers. The report notes that these users consume more than half of the downlink data volume — which it describes as ‘broadly consistent’ with the trends reported over the past two years in developed markets,” Lomas reports. “However the device-types these hungriest of data-hungry mobile users are conducting their bandwidth hogging activities on has seen a bit of a shift. The report notes that in the developed market being analysed, smartphones now constitute the majority of ‘extreme devices,’ taking a 63% fraction vs 40% in 2012′s study. While tablet device usage among this group has experienced the largest relative decline, dropping from 6% in 2012 to 2% in 2013.”

“It’s possible this is a consequence of smartphones getting bigger and thus more tablet-esque — aka the rise of the phablet — allowing extreme users to choose a compromise device,” Lomas reports. “Bigger smartphones, after all, often more screen real-estate for performing data-consuming activities. And, unlike tablets, these gizmos are merely a handy pocket away from users’ fingertips.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: When Apple finally extracts their collective head from their collective ass and ships iPhone models with larger screens, they’ll do more damage to slavish copier Samsung than all of their endless, plodding patent infringement cases combined.

We believe that Apple became infatuated with the fact that only they could produce small, thin smartphones with an efficient OS that could work with the small batteries that these compact iPhones housed. “Nobody else can do such things.” Meanwhile, battery-hogging Android leeches like Samsung slapped larger screens on their phones to hide the fact that they needed significantly larger batteries in order to run for even a few hours (Android phones are notorious for running out of charge).

Far too many otherwise intelligent consumers saw little or nothing of Apple’s considerable engineering superiority (the iPhone 5s is simply the best smartphone anyone has ever produced), these otherwise intelligent consumers only saw iPhone’s smaller screens. They didn’t see Android’s inefficiency or inferior ecosystem, they only saw phones with larger screens.

If we’ve heard from one person who went with an Android phone for a larger screen who in fact really wanted an iPhone – “I’d have gotten an iPhone if only they had a larger screen” – we’ve heard it from a thousand. These are top tier, cream-of-the-crop customers (i.e. Apple’s target demographic), not low information cheapskates. They want to be Apple customers and participate heavily in Apple’s ecosystems, but, for a few years now, Apple has been blowing these sales by failing to deliver the product these high value customers desired. It’s inexplicable; any downsides (fragmentation, inventory management, etc.) are vastly outweighed by the vast sales potential to those who should be Apple customers, but are now carrying a plastic piece of crap from Samsung.

Bottom line: Apple screwed the pooch on this one. Shit or get off the pot, Tim.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]