Smartphone data usage in South Africa

Of all the networks we asked, only Vodacom were willing to give actual statistics. They didn’t want to reveal any competitor-sensitive information either, so they provided a per-platform breakdown for November 2011:

iOS: 219MB/month
BlackBerry: 169MB/month
Android: 153MB/month
Vodacom CEO Pieter Uys previously revealed that the average data consumption over the 4.1 million smartphones on their network had increased from 40MB to 80MB in the last six months of 2011.
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So when are my 110 meg being increased to 250meg ? :)
 
Other surveys and statistics from operators indicated that BlackBerry has the greatest smartphone market share in SA, followed by Nokia’s Symbian smartphone operating system (OS).
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Is Symbian still considered a smartphone OS?
 
If take out the torrenters I think BB avarge usage will go right down below 100mb
 
Well if the price of bandwith using mobile service providers was cheap, then the average usage wud be much higher. I have an android phone and i use my wifi wherever possible and 3g when im out on the road to stay connected. My wifi usage per month is around 5GB.
 
I thought that the average monthly usage for a BB did not exceed 100MB per month which is why they wanted to introduce that silly cap on BIS usage? Am I misunderstanding something here?
 
Its called misrepresenting information to forward your own agenda.

i.e:
1. when you measure the average of all users you get 163MB per user
2. when you measure the average of all users minus the top 1% you get less than 100mb.

Its like the headlines on some news articles. modify till you get maximum number of clicks at the cost of accuracy.
 
I think the biggest problem with data use is its related to price. Lower it and that numbers will increase and no I am not referring to downloads.

When my Android phone was on its very own 5 Gig/pm Sim(Cell C 60 gig promotion) Data was always on and I did not connect to my home network. Without any downloads of movies or other content, it used up about 3 Gig a month on average.

Some services like watching YouTube or listening to internet radio obviously caused my high usage, but it was truly services I enjoyed while I had the BW and will truly miss.

Now I am back to normal, wait till I get home before I update any software and try and avoid the internet as a whole. My Email/Tapatalk and other limited usage eat through my 100 MB in no time flat. Yes I need to relearn how to limit my use, its just a pity that I can not use my phone the way it was meant to.
 
Elimentals said:
Now I am back to normal, wait till I get home before I update any software and try and avoid the internet as a whole. My Email/Tapatalk and other limited usage eat through my 100 MB in no time flat. Yes I need to relearn how to limit my use, its just a pity that I can not use my phone the way it was meant to.
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Precisely my sentiments. I have 75MB/m bundled as part of the deal. This goes no where but as a matter of principle I refuse to pay the top-up rates, and try to stay within this limit (use Wifi mainly). The data cost would in fact far exceed my airtime subscription. It then basically means a crippled smartphone (Android) with all the needed function/feature rich capability - a raison d'etre for smartphone - just tantalisingly out of reach.

Price of data needs to plummet.
 
When I originally got my SGS my data usage went up dramatically, but when I got my iPad my usage went right down again. Mostly WiFi now.
 
I wonder if the iPhone usage is the highest because they typically bundle 500 MB with it (versus smaller bundles with Android - which sucks).

Also, I used to do around 600 MB on my Berry a month, downloading podcasts using an App I got in Blackberry World.

Nice of VC to release the numbers. Oh and GASP - MTN replied!
 
Still not completely convinced that phones will be the high data users of the future. It's a great time waster, but I only use it when out of reach of a computer/tablet.
 
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