Siri, 1%, and the Truth About Data Usage

[Commentary] Last week saw two sets of stories tied to a single report that made bombastic assertions about changing mobile data usage patterns. While the assertions themselves are a bit misleading, they do point to an underlying truth – when using data on the go is easy and useful, people do it.

Everything flowed from a report by Arieso, a company that just happens to sell mobile network management solutions to carriers. Reports focused on two main claims from Arieso’s report. First, that iPhone 4S users use twice as much data as iPhone 4 users. The alleged culprit there is Siri, the digital assistant that is included in the iPhone 4S but not the iPhone 4. Second, that 1% of mobile users consume half of the world’s data. For that we can thank "data hogs." When you look a bit closer, neither of these claims are as surprising as they may appear. As Ars Technica’s Jacqui Cheng discovered two months ago, in all likelihood the Siri service itself uses a relatively small amount of data. That means the data spike does not come from Siri per se. Instead, the spike is facilitated by Siri.