Four mobile apps generate 82% of data on iOS devices – report

Media Player, Safari, App Store and Facebook account for more than four-fifths of mobile data volume generated by iOS devices, according to a report by virtualisation and cloud computing firm Citrix. Media Player accounts for nearly half of the mobile data total. Surveying mobile data subscriber usage patterns for the three months ended May, the Citrix ByteMobile Mobile Analytics Report further found that these top four apps generate 52 per cent of mobile transactions.

And by accounting for 1 per cent of mobile transactions, Citrix said eBay now generates enough traffic to be a significant mobile data contributor. It has become the first e-commerce app to pass the 1 per cent threshold. Facebook has also risen in prominence since February 2012, growing from a 1 per cent share of mobile data traffic to 5 per cent. The report also found that, on a worldwide basis, Google Maps usage on Apple devices surpasses that of Apple’s own map application, with Google Maps generating a slight majority of mobile map data volume. Apple holds an edge in the Americas with the North American market, in particular, preferring Apple Maps over Google Maps (63 per cent to 37 per cent). Google Maps dominates the rest of the world, however, with Google Maps preference peaking at 80 per cent in the Asia-Pacific region. Mobile audio, especially music, was also identified as an emerging category of mobile data that now constitutes “a meaningful percentage of overall data traffic”. Of the total volume of mobile audio measured over the period, internet radio constitutes the vast majority. The recent iTunes Radio announcement by Apple, said Citrix, suggests that internet radio will continue its strong growth as iTunes Radio traffic adds to that driven by popular applications, such as Spotify and Pandora.