Data Hungry Mobile Apps Eating into Bandwidth Use

Facing mobile broadband caps, it’s easy for consumers to blame constant web browsing and occasional online video as the big bandwidth hogs, but they shouldn't give a free pass to their mobile apps. The average smartphone software uses 10.7 MB per hour, according to Virgin Media Business, which studied data usage of the 50 most popular mobile apps in the UK. The hungriest software, Tap Zoo, topped out far higher than the average, using up to 115 MB per hour. While these hourly data utilization rates are much lower than streaming video or other media, consumers often jump in and out of apps at various times during the day. Virgin Media’s estimate is that the typical smartphone owner uses apps for 667 minutes per month, which equates to 11 hours. The number of downloaded apps is expected to top 44 billion by 2016, and app usage is on the rise, so it would be short-sighted to dismiss the mobile broadband usage required by data-hungry software on smartphones.