NEWS RELEASE
September 23, 2008
IPHONES DOMINATE AUSTRALIAN MOBILE
DATA CONSUMPTION ACCORDING TO
FIRST COMPREHENSIVE MOBILE INTERNET
REPORT
...Amethon Australian Mobile Internet Insight Study finds
iPhone users consumed six times as much data as average
mobile users...
An Australian Mobile Internet Insight study 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
Australia’s mobile web browsing activities for August, says that the iPhone
completely dominated data consumption behaviour and iPhone generated
traffic was growing at nine per cent per day.
The Australian Mobile Internet Insight, which is the first issue of a bi-monthly
report, 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.
ENDS
About the data
This report draws on data aggregated from Amethon’s global client base with
a specific focus on providing insight into Australia’s mobile web browsing
activities for the first two weeks of August 2008.
The number of global mobile browsing sessions analysed by Amethon’s
Mobile Analytics technology during the month of August is more than 5
million. More than 80% of visitors to Australian sites are from Australia.
The amount of mobile traffic in the global data set is more than 100 million
page views. The report represents browsing and download traffic only and
does not include streaming or P2P data.
About Amethon
For further information and images, please contact:
Louise Roberts or Pru Quinlan
Einsteinz Communications - for Amethon
T: (02) 8905 0995
M: 0405 579633
Email: louise@einsteinz.com.au or pru@einsteinz.com.au
NEWS 
