Trends on Tuesday: Global Mobile Data Traffic Nearly Doubles in 2013

Global mobile data traffic almost doubled in 2013 according to Cisco’s recent Traffic Forecast Update. There are a number of other mobile data traffic trends in the report, but here are five trends we wanted to highlight today:

• Global mobile data traffic grew 81 percent in 2013. Global mobile data traffic reached 1.5 exabytes per month at the end of 2013, up from 820 petabytes per month at the end of 2012.
• Last year’s mobile data traffic was nearly 18 times the size of the entire global Internet in 2000. One exabyte of traffic traversed the global Internet in 2000, and in 2013 mobile networks carried nearly 18 exabytes of traffic.
• Mobile video traffic exceeded 50 percent for the first time in 2012. Mobile video traffic was 53 percent of traffic by the end of 2013.
• Average smartphone usage grew 50 percent in 2013. The average amount of traffic per smartphone in 2013 was 529MB per month, up from 353 MB per month in 2012.
• In 2013, the number of mobile-connected tablets increased 2.2-fold to 92 million, and each tablet generated 2.6 times more traffic than the average smartphone. In 2013, mobile data traffic per tablet was 1,374 MB per month, compared to 529MB per month per smartphone.

As mobile data traffic soars, your customers will be accessing agency sites via mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, etc.) even more frequently, so a mobile first strategy can be very effective for meeting the mobile user’s needs.