Citrix Application Performance Management
Citrix ByteMobile Analytics Report Outlines User Behaviors, Peak Mobile Network Usage Times
October 31, 2012
By Rory Lidstone, TMCnet Contributing Writer
Providing insights into mobile data network usage, application traffic patterns and subscriber quality of experience (QoE) on mobile networks, Citrix has published the ByteMobile Mobile Analytics Report for the fourth quarter of 2012. This report delves deep into mobile networks, revealing such information as how subscriber behavior affects content-specific busy periods, how mobile app usage differs by device, and how the mobile video user experience can vary by both region and network.
Specifically, this quarter's report compares subscriber behavior from device to device, as well as between differing mobile operating systems. For example, the report states that Android (News - Alert) smartphone and tablet data consumption patterns are similar in terms of volume and type, being largely dominated by, media players and Internet browsing. Together, these actions made up 70 percent of mobile data volume from Android devices. Devices running iOS, meanwhile, tend to use media players, iTunes and browsers, which make up 75 percent of data volume for the iPhone (News - Alert) and a whopping 95 percent for the iPad.
The report also identifies peak usage hours, which tend to negatively impact network performance — often by as much as 30 percent.
"This report serves as a vital resource for operators by demonstrating when capacity is strained throughout the day and what applications subscribers are using most," said Chris Koopmans, vice president and general manager of Service Provider Platforms, Citrix. "For example, we observed that subscribers generate greater demand for mobile video in the late evening hours of 10 to 11 p.m., which coincides with a social networking busy hour of 10 p.m., and differs from the 4 p.m. busy hour for consuming news, weather and maps."
In terms of mobile messaging, the report found that Skype (News - Alert) is used twice as often on the iPad than the iPhone, while iPhone users are three times more likely to use Facebook Messenger than those using an iPad. Furthermore, 94 percent of iPhone mobile subscribers stick to the top four most used messaging apps with Skype at 30 percent, followed by WhatsApp at 24 percent, with Viber and Facebook (News - Alert) Messenger coming in third and fourth with 22 and 18 percent, respectively.
Citrix recently announced two significant partnerships, the first of which is with Alcatel-Lucent with the goal of accelerating the arrival of 'carrier cloud' solutions through Citrix Ready, CloudBand Management System and CloudBand Node. The second partnership is with Cisco, marking a significant expansion of their prior desktop virtualization partnership.
Edited by Rich Steeves