Nielsen: "The top 6% smartphone users are consuming half of all data"

    

A common say by broadband operators (and DPI vendors) is that x% (usually 5%) of broadband subscribers consume yy% (usually 50%) of total traffic (like here and here). Without un-biased hard data, this was so far just a common argument to justify traffic management - like saying "these abusers take it all from the silent majority".

In addition, when mobile operators are moving to usage-based billing (see - AT&T, Verizon, O2 UK) they usually say something like "Currently, 98% of AT&T smartphone customers use less than 2 GB of data a month on average" - i.e. moving to unlimited data is good for you, Mr. consumer. Some challenge this - see an example here.

Nielsen Wire has just published some findings on US smartphone usage, showing percentile information.

See the chart below and the article - "Quantifying the Mobile Data Tsunami and its Implications" - here. 

The data comes from real phone bills ("from more than 60,000 mobile customers every month") and Q1 of 2010 shows an increase of 230% (!)  in the average data consumption. In 2010, the top 6% consumed 50% of all data.

According to Nielsen - "99% ..  are better off with a pricing scheme like AT&T’s new data pricing model than under flat-rate pricing where they are paying for much more than they ever use.". This confirms AT&T claims.

So I wonder why AT&T is doing this - maybe they expect this 230% yearly growth to continue .. (see "AT&T CTO: Traffic has Grown 5,000% in 3 Years" - here).