Android users consume more data than iPhone users!

US remains one of the hottest markets for smartphones. 37% of mobile consumers in the US now has a smartphone and Android remains to be a popular OS of choice. Android now has a 36% market share, which is flat from previous month. Apple iOS has 26% and RIM Blackberry OS has 23%. Between Android-iOS-RIM, 85% of the smartphone OS’s are covered. And the three are in a three way stalemate with no one really ceding ground nor capturing new markets. Yet another source telling us that Android isn’t really eating into iPhone market share.

Almost everything else is less than signification. Symbian is almost dead. HP WebOS and Palm OS take a sliver of the market. Windows Phones 7, Microsoft’s latest mobile OS has captured 1% market share. Microsoft is slowly but steadily gaining market share and it has more ways than one when it comes to mobile strategy. Read our Microsoft’s mobile strategy.

Data. Data and more data

The smartphone OS share did not throw any surprises and it might not throw any for the next six months. It’s the data which is throwing some surprises. Android users hog a lot of bandwidth. They download 582 MB per month. iOS users use 492 MB per month. HP WebOS and Windows Phone 7 users aren’t far behind. Blackberry users use a lot less data than any of the other smartphone users.

The data is from the analysis of 65000 cell phone bills in the first quarter of 2011. Based on the information we have it is hard to guess why Android users consume more data. It could be their engagement with the phone or ill designed apps which are just consuming data unnecessarily.

Ironically, Android OS users last 30 day activity is beaten by iOS’s last 30 day activity in all categories. Looks like 74% of Android application downloads proves to be much heavier than 79% of iOS apps. Are Android apps bloated? What am I missing?

Source : Nielsen