State of the Mobile Internet

Some interesting tidbits here from Akamai (with the full report here).  My comments are in Bold.

• The average monthly 3G traffic is the highest for laptops (1-7 GB), followed by tablets (250-800 MB) and smartphones (80-600 MB) ->  not surprising

• Online video (30–40 percent) is the largest contributor to mobile traffic volume, followed by Web browsing (20–30 percent). -> not surprising.  Here a recent study suggests YouTube alone is 22% of mobile broadband usage. 

• On tablets & smartphones, online audio, e-mail, software downloads, and social networking traffic are big consumers of 3G data traffic. -> great story for Pandora, staying connected while on the go (email, social networking traffic), and filling voids in your time or discovering apps in social settings and downloading them immediately (app downloads)

• Tablet and smartphone devices usually have frequent and short sessions typically during the whole day, sometimes showing a periodic nature. -> consistent with my thesis – consumers grab the “best” device for a given activity when that device makes sense because of some product attribute.

• Laptops are usually on mobile connections for a few longer sessions, mainly during daytime and the evening -> not surprising, driven by production which is happening during large blocks of time

• Tablet traffic patterns over 3G mobile networks are much closer to smartphone traffic patterns than to laptop traffic patterns -> tablets are above scaling a specific aspect of mobile phones (the screen size) so usage scenarios are similiar.