UK iPhone users engaged in heavy data use
updated 12:15 pm EDT, Thu March 26, 2009
UK iPhoners take to web
New analysis indicates that iPhone owners are using the data functions of their phone far more than other people in the UK, Reuters notes. Figures from comScore suggest that over 90 percent of British iPhone users are making use of "mobile media," defined as including aspects like websites, e-mail, social networking and games. Some 79.7 percent of iPhone users are said to have regularly accessed news and information in a quarter ending with January, as compared to 48 percent of other smartphone users, and 19.8 percent of general cellphone owners.
75.4 percent of iPhone users read e-mail, versus 35.4 percent of smartphone owners and 13.1 percent of regular cellphone owners. For music, these figures come out to 66, 40.5 and 22.6 percent, respectively. The e-mail figure is said to be more remarkable however, since in spite of complaints about the iPhone's touchscreen keyboard, its usage is substantially higher than with many phones that use physical keys.
iPhone owners remain a distinct minority in the UK, with sales having only recently cracked the 1 million mark. The device was first launched in late 2007, and has struggled to compete against products from more established smartphone makers such as Nokia. The heavy data use may in fact stem from being required to pay for unlimited plans, says comScore analyst Alistair Hill.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Feb 2009
exact figures
It would be much more helpful to have actual figures as to how many GBs the average user goes through in a month, but since those figures are only known by the carriers and the carriers can't be trusted ...
For instance most of the folks I meet only use a few hundred MBs of data in a given month, but the plans are sold in multiple GBs. It seems odd that we are all paying for something that we have no data on at all.
It's almost like buying a car that doesn't have any mileage figures so you don't really know what you are going to pay for gas. The auto seller then says "give me x dollars a month for unlimited gas" but you have no idea if buying the gas gallon by gallon would be cheaper because he won't tell you what the MPG is.