Smartphones add to Wi-Fi data deluge

Growing smartphone sales are impacting the use of Wi-Fi around the world

The demand for mobile connectivity is pushing the amount of data being sent over Wi-Fi networks ever higher, new figures from wireless network access firm WeFi reveal.

Among the main findings of the WeFi Analytics Report Q2/2010: An Analysis of Global Wi-Fi was a massive rise in the amount of data being sent to and from smartphones over Wi-Fi.

The Android platform in particular saw tremendous growth, with 30 per cent of Android platforms consuming 500MB to 2GB of data and 20 per cent going over 2GB.

Breaking down the figures for Android phones further reveals that 35 per cent of devices monitored were in the US, while the UK accounted for just six per cent.

Symbian devices are also gobbling up data, according to the report, with 32 per cent of devices running the platform consuming between 100MB and 500MB a month, up from 20 per cent in Q1, while 10 per cent use over 2GB on Wi-Fi connections.

Vice president of marketing and products at WeFi, Amit Shaked, said he was surprised by how much data consumption on Android phones had grown, and said he thought this trend was only set to continue.

"We did expect the trend of Android phones consuming more Wi-Fi to grow, but we were surprised by the magnitude of growth from Q1 to Q2," he said.

"A key conjecture is that because it is easy for users to get connected to Wi-Fi they will always prefer Wi-Fi over 3G and use it as long as they can, which means Wi-Fi is becoming a viable fabric for mobile data offloading."