[Analysys Mason]: Smartphone Traffic Uses Wi-Fi (81%) and Generated at Homes (90%)

A new report by Martin Scott [pictured], Practice Head, and Aris Xylouris, Research Analyst, Analysys Mason analyses the smartphone usage of consumers in France, Germany, the UK and the USA.

The finds that "19% of all smartphone traffic observed in the panel was carried over the cellular network. LTE will make cellular networks more attractive relative to Wi-Fi, but we still expect the proportion of total smartphone traffic carried over the cellular network to decline to 16% by 2019. The volume of data will grow significantly on both types of network

.. 90% of panellists’ Wi-Fi traffic that we were able to categorise and identify came from home Wi-Fi connections and 89% of panellists connected to such networks. This is not necessarily a single residential connection – for example, many people connected to multiple home Wi-Fi networks, presumably those of friends and family.

Also:

• Beyond the home, the narrative is more fragmented – 60% of consumers connected to operator-branded hotspots (for example, AT&T, BT or O2 hotspots that were not also branded as community Wi-Fi), but this accounted for only 2.1% of all Wi-Fi traffic generated. The greatest value of such hotspots, it seems, is not generally in easing the congestion of particular macrocells, but in reinforcing brand presence and improving QoE in areas with poor cellular data performance. 

• The role of tethering is a complex part of an operator’s strategy and can, in some situations, help (with the generation of further monetisable traffic) and sometimes hinder (when the tethering is used instead of higher-priced dedicated tariffs).[The chart above] indicates tethering where the smartphone was not the cellular bearer – the cellular connection was shared from either a Mi-Fi device, a tablet or another smartphone.

See "Consumer smartphone usage 2014: mobile data usage" - here.