We love market shares and usage statistics. The latest number crunching has to do with who consumes the most data and compares basic phones to smartphones to tablets. Since the rise of the smartphone, we’ve seen a constantly increasing usage of data on smartphones, hitting an extremely high 78 – 79% in 2011 and 2012. Most people would think that usage would continue to grow until feature phones are totally phased out, but it looks like tablets are coming in to grab up a bit of that usage share.
According to some forecast numbers, by the end of 2013 we can expect tablets to account for 29% of mobile data usage, up 10% from 2012 and accounting for nearly 1/3 of all usage. The flipside to that is that tablets are expected to account for only 10% of smart device sales. Adding 2 and 2 together is telling us that having that bigger screen means more usage. I also think it’d be interesting to see how many of those tablets are being sold with a data plan. I don’t think it’s too crazy to assume that part of the reason tablet usage may increase is that cellular companies impose tiny data limits on smartphones, where consumers don’t have to worry about that on a WiFi-only tablet.
Other numbers indicate that Android and iOS market share has likely peaked and won’t make any significant gains or losses like what we’ve seen the past few years. Android has capped around 70%, with iOS coming in a not-so-close second with 20%. Actual usage between them only has about an 8% margin, however.
It’s also interesting to see Samsung’s market share. We all sort of knew this already, but the top Android manufacturer has an enormous lead on every competitor in the market. Over 50% of all Android smartphone usage comes from a Samsung device, with LG and HTC accounting for a combined 30% behind them. While that’s great news for Samsung, let’s hope HTC and LG’s newest offerings this year can create a more competitive ecosystem for Android.
Come comment on this article: Tablets to eat into smartphones’ share of mobile content usage by the end of 2013