Average U.S. smartphone data usage up 89 percent

A new research released on Friday shows that smartphone users in the United States are consuming more data than ever, growing by 89 percent in the first quarter on a year-over-year basis. According to data from marketing company Nielsen, the amount of data the average smartphone user consumes per month is 435 Megabytes (MB) in the first quarter of 2011, compared with 230 MB in the same period last year. As for the distribution of data consumption, data usage for the top 10 percent of smartphone users is up 109 percent while the top 1 percent has grown their usage by 155 percent from 1.8 Gigabytes (GB) in the first quarter of 2010 to over 4.6 GB this year. The research said consumers with iPhones and Android smartphones consume the most data, which is driven by app-friendly operating systems like Apple's iOS and Google's Android. Windows Phone 7 users doubled their usage over the fourth quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of 2011, perhaps due to growth in the number of applications available. Meanwhile, the cost per MB for smartphones has dropped by 46 percent over the last year, from 14 cents per MB to 8 cents, said the research. According to Internet marketing research company comScore, in the first quarter of 2011, 234 million Americans ages 13 and older used mobile devices, 74,6 million of whom are smartphone users.