Australians with mobile phones or tablets collectively downloaded 20,000 terabytes of data in the three months to June. Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP
Downloads on mobile devices in Australia have doubled in the past 12 months as more people embrace smartphones and 4G networks.
Australians with mobiles or tablets collectively downloaded 20,000 terabytes of data in the three months to June, up from 10,000 in the same period last year, according to figures released on Tuesday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The figures suggest the average mobile subscriber downloads about 300MB of data a month, the bureau said – the equivalent of about 100 songs.
"Download volumes for mobile handsets have really seen explosive growth," said the bureau's assistant director, Lesley Martin.
The increase has partially been driven by growth in the number of people using smartphones and tablets. There were 19.6 million mobile subscribers by June, an increase of 3 million since June 2012.
Foad Fadaghi, a senior analyst at research firm Telsyte, said the increase had been fuelled by the introduction of 4G mobile networks, which offer faster speeds and encourage more downloads than 3G networks.
"People have started using mobile apps for many of the things they used to do on computers," he said.
For example, the use of social media apps such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram had "exploded" in the past year, he said.
Music streaming services such as Pandora and Spotify were also boosting the amount of data people use, he added.
The results come as the analyst firm IDC released figures showing mobile phone shipments are down 20% on 2012.
The drop has been driven mainly by a 45% fall in shipments of feature phones (old-style mobile phones) but IDC said there had also been a "slight decline" in smartphone shipments
No comments:
Post a Comment