IPhoners swarm to mobile content: Survey figures show high data use among Apple’s phone owners

In the hands of well-heeled, early adopters, the iPhone’s large touchscreen, user interface and an unlimited data plan lead to high rates of browsing, video viewing, music listening and social networking, according to a new report from M:Metrics.
Overall, that’s good news for the mobile industry: a fun, intuitively interactive device and unlimited service plans can drive data consumption, near-and-dear to the hearts of network operators seeking to induce consumers to add data to their mobile diet. Not to mention the host of companies devoted to mobile content and, someday, mobile advertising.
Apple Inc. iPhone owners are much more likely to engage in data than smartphone owners as a whole, and far more likely than mobile-phone users in general, according to M:Metrics’ survey data.
The “iPhone demographic” is similar to smartphone owners in general: male, aged 25-34, with a college degree and more than $100,000 in annual income. But the M:Metrics numbers, the result of a survey of more than 31,000 mobile phone users (and 202 iPhoners), show that iPhone users are big consumers of services well-sampled by smartphone owners but only nibbled at by the average mobile-phone owner.
Fully 85% of iPhone owners browse the Web on their device, versus 58% for smartphone owners and 13% for the average mobile customer. Where only 5% of average mobile customers watched mobile TV or video, 14% of smartphone owners do and 31% of iPhone users do so. Nearly 75% of iPhone users listen to music, versus 28% for smartphone owners and nearly 7% of average mobile customers.
Despite the fact that iPhone owners’ and smartphone owners’ demographics are similar, the iPhone drives greater mobile content consumption, according to Mark Donovan, an M:Metrics analyst.
“In addition to the attributes of the device itself, another important factor is that all iPhones on AT&T Mobility are attached to an unlimited data plan,” Donovan said. “Our data shows that once the fear of surprise data charges is eliminated, mobile content consumption increases dramatically, regardless of device.”
YouTube and Google Maps are accessed by 30% and 36%, respectively, of iPhone owners, compared with 1% and more than 2% of average mobile-phone users, according to the M:Metrics data.