A device-based study by Mobidia reveals wi-fi traffic is higher than cellular by a rate of two-to-one. The study is based on worldwide findings for smartphone users. Interestingly, wi-fi accounted for 70% of smartphone-originated traffic. Looking at the global market, over 90% of smartphone users utilize wi-fi for data usage reasons. The results of the study are a revaluation for industry leaders in smartphone technology.

Chris Hill, Vice President of Marketing at Mobidia, comments on the exciting results of the survey:

“We were quite surprised with the findings,”

“Not only did we find that data usage on smartphones was much higher than the typical 100-500 megabytes average monthly usage that is often cited, but we also found that Wi-Fi usage often outpaced mobile usage by as much as six-to-one in some countries.”

It is interesting, but I don’t know if it comes as a surprise to me. It seems almost everybody has a mobile device on them now days and staying connected throughout the day is more important than ever. It makes a lot of sense that the wi-fi networks would be taking on more and more traffic. I think we can expect to see this trend grow, especially in markets where traditional hard-wired networks and home pc’s are not common.

Thomas Wehmeier, Informa principal analyst comments on the findings of the study:

“Building small-screen access revenues into a $100 billion annual market is already a considerable achievement, but today’s mobile data market is arguably still in the early stages of development,”

“Indeed, mobile data pricing models prevalent in the market today lag years behind the advanced segmentation seen in the mobile voice market. Fulfilling the industry’s future growth potential by driving smartphone and data adoption into today’s untapped customer segments will require operators to build an in-depth understanding of all aspects of customer behavior in order to deploy sustainable and profitable pricing models. And Mobidia’s solution can provide the information to help enlighten that understanding.”

So it is clear thet analyzing data usage simply based on cellular data can be grossly inaccurate, and that wi-fi is accounting for more traffic than was expected, but like I said, it’s probably not a surprise for most readers. I wish that wi-fi was available everywhere, but we haven’t even gotten to the point where major cities have it everywhere yet. It would be nice if we didn’t have to rely on hard-wired networks for personal use at all.

The full research report on this study is titled, “Understanding today’s smartphone user: Demystifying data usage trends on cellular & Wi-Fi networks”, and is available from Mobidia Technology, Inc.