A new survey has confirmed what most people have already been talking about anecdotally: that iPhone users are massive consumers of mobile web content. According to the latest bit of research from M:Metrics, 85 percent of iPhone users accessed news and information on their device during January, compared to the average of 58 percent for other smartphone users and 13.1 percent for the rest of mobile owners.
The data consumption spike also carried across to other services, with 30.9 percent of iPhone owners watching mobile TV or video, compared to 4.6 percent of the market average or 14.2 percent of smartphones; while 49.7 percent of iPhone owners accessed a social networking site in January, compared to 19.4 precent of smartphone owners and 4.2 percent of average mobile users.
So what’s driving the trend: it’s not the speedy network access, after all, so it’s either the huge screen or the slick interface. Either way, I suspect once carriers and content providers get wind of this, they’ll be pressurising other handset manufacturers to start moving in the same direction while keeping their fingers crossed for a spike in data consumption as a result.