Orange sees mobile data usage double in 12 months

UK Mobile data usage over handsets and dongles has more than doubled in the past 12 months to the end of February, according to  Orange UK.

Figures from its Digital Media Index, a quarterly report on customer consumption of digital media, found that dongle data usage increased by 4,125 per cent in the past year, while handset data usage has increased by 108 per cent bringing the total number of GB downloaded per month to over 386,000.

Dongle subscriptions have also surged by over 504 per cent year on year, bringing the total number of Orange UK customers with 3G handsets and/or dongles to 3.824 million as of the end of March, 2009.

Music, videos, games and social networking seem to be the big draws for mobile data users, with an average of 380,988 full tracks downloaded from the Orange Music Store each month – an increase of 38 per cent over the previous quarter. Mobile video also grew 38 per cent quarter on quarter, with a total of 2.33 million videos downloaded between December and February 2009. The number of games downloaded topped 771,278 for the three month period, up eight per cent on the previous quarter.

The number of monthly unique users to social networking sites jumped 48 per cent quarter on quarter to 946,564, while monthly page impressions climbed 129 per cent. The average number of social networking pages per user per month hit 397, indicating some heavy usage.

The survey could also be used to highlight worrying trends in consumer interest areas, given that the most frequent searches were for footballer’s wife and pop singer Cheryl Cole, recently deceased reality TV star Jade Goody and US teen entertainer Mylie Cyrus.