Video is dominating mobile Internet use, according to a new Sandvine mobile video report. Video is 60% of downstream traffic and 62% of traffic overall, according to the report, titled Sandvine Mobile Internet Phenomena Report.
Sandvine dug into the details of the nature of the growth. “Instagram grew in the upstream as more consumers share images and videos,” the report reads. “TikTok, Snapchat (video), FaceTime, and even Facebook Live were all in the top 50 applications worldwide on the upstream that are video-sharing-centric. Social networking represented 12.74% of overall traffic and 16% of upstream traffic. Other categories that grew were messaging applications, which were especially strong on the upstream and increasingly are video-based. Marketplace traffic (both for purchases and updates) and gaming both grew.”
Global application traffic share broke down in this way among the top ten:
- video streaming (62.06% of total traffic, 65.5% of downstream traffic, 22.4% of upstream traffic);
- social (12.74%, 12.9%, 16.8%);
- messaging (6.77%, 5.9%, 16.9%);
- marketplace (5.64%, 5.9%, 1.9%),
- Web (5.46%, 4.2%, 19.5%);
- gaming (3.29%, 3.7%, 3.3%);
- cloud (1.80%, 0.3%, 7.0%);
- security/VPN (1.34%, 0.8%, 7.9%);
- file sharing (0.86%, 0.6%, 3.8%);
- audio streaming (0.04%, 0.2%, 0.5%)
Sandvine Mobile Video Report
The top 10 app traffic generators globally:
- YouTube (25.49% of total traffic, 27.1% of downstream traffic, 7.4% of upstream traffic);
- Facebook Video (17.54%, 18.6%, 5.4%);
- Instagram (7.1%, 7.1%, 8.0%);
- Facebook (5.2%, 5.2%, 4.5%);
- Netflix (4.0%, 4.3% 0.7%);
- HTTP media stream: (3.9%, 3.9% 1.1%);
- Google Play (3.33%, 3.5% 0.1%);
- TikTok (3.0%, 3.2% 1.2%);
- WhatsApp (2.76%, 2.6% 4.4%);
- Snapchat (2.04%, 2.0%, 2.1%).
The overall top ten mobile application traffic shareholders in North America are:
- YouTube (39.79%);
- WhatsApp (10.57%);
- Facebook Video (6.81%);
- Instagram (6.59%);
- Google Play (5.64%);
- Google (3.38%);
- Facebook (2.61%);
- HTTP Download (2.37%);
- App Stores (1.44%);
- HTTP Media Stream (1.29%).
The top downstream companies in North America were, in order, YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook Video, Instagram, Google Play, Facebook, HTTP download, Google, App stores and HTTP media stream, according to the Sandvine mobile video report. The upstream leaders, also in order, were WhatsApp, Google, YouTube, iCloud Photo, Samsung Cloud, Amazon AWS, Instagram, iCloud, Skype and Facebook.
Signs of the growth of mobile data usage abound. Last June, for instance, the CTIA’s 2019 Annual Wireless Industry Survey reported that Americans in 2018 used 82% more data than during 2017, and usage was up across almost every metric.
