The Nielsen Company on Friday released its latest findings regarding smartphone data usage and as expected, data consumption continued to increase at an explosive pace in the first quarter of 2011. In the same quarter last year, the average smartphone user consumed 230MB of data on their device each month. Last quarter, that number shot up 89% to 435MB. The heaviest data users are responsible for the bulk of the growth, with average data usage among the top 10% of smartphone owners having grown 155% from 1.8GB to 4.6GB on average each month. Lucky for them, the average cost per megabyte of smartphone data has dropped 46% over the same period, from $0.14 in the first quarter of 2010 to $0.08 last quarter. Android users remain the most data hungry, averaging 582MB each month, and iPhone users followed closely behind last quarter, using 492MB of data each month on average. Windows Phone 7, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry users round out the top-5, consuming 317MB, 174MB and 127MB on average each month, respectively. Some additional data from Nielsen’s report can be seen after the break.
