Mobile data usage surged 77 percent in the first half of the year, led by ever-increasing use of YouTube.
YouTube videos accounted for the single largest slice of mobile bandwidth usage and took up 22 percent of the pie, according to the MobileTrends Report H1 2011 from Allot Communications. Usage grew 150 percent from the last half of 2010, and now accounts for 52 percent of all mobile video streaming. This was partly due to the increase in HD videos available on Google's video-streaming service.
Unsurprisingly video streaming remained the single largest application, by bandwidth, and accounted for 39 percent of all mobile bandwidth used.
Use of VoIP and instant messaging services grew the fastest—101 percent more from the previous half of the year—but accounted for only 4 percent of the world's mobile data bandwidth. Skype dominated this category with a reduced market share of 82 percent, while interest grew among rivals like Viber and WhatsApp.
Allot attributed the growth to the increase in front-facing cameras in smartphones and tablets, along with more competitors in the market. Furthermore, telephone carriers have apparently become more open to such applications.
"This shift in the status quo presents a real challenge for mobile operators and threatens their survival," wrote the authors of the report. "They have already started to respond to this challenge by offering new service plans which monetize the network usage and better reflect the true value of these applications for both the subscriber and the operator."
The surge in mobile data consumption explains why most carriers, like Verizon, AT&T, Clearwire, and presumably others, have stopped offering unlimited data plans. In fact, 51 percent of the "more than 50 mobile networks" surveyed around the world no longer offer unlimited or flat rate pricing plans. (Cue: LightSquared?)
Social networking applications eat up a small amount of data, but are also growing at a phenomenal pace, the report said. Twitter tripled its mobile bandwidth usage from the last half of 2010, while Facebook's grew 166 percent. According to Twitter, the micro-blogging service supports over 200 million tweets per day and a new Twitter app is registered every 1.5 seconds. "Twitter shows every sign that it will keep on growing as it continues to create a comprehensive micro-blogging ecosystem," Allot wrote.
App stores almost doubled their download traffic in the first half of the year, led by Apple's App Store (84 percent), Android Market (13 percent), and "Others" (3 percent).
Meanwhile, fixed data networks grew by only 25 percent so far this year.
The MobileTrends report was based on stats from 250 million mobile subscribers and over 50 mobile networks around the world.
Also today, the Pew Internet and American Life Project released a report that said 71 percent of Internet users have used a video-sharing Web site like YouTube or Vimeo, up from 66 percent last year.