Cellular iPads consume 3x the mobile data as smartphones

Since the iPad arrived more than three years ago, Wi-Fi-only versions of the tablet have been far more popular than cellular-capable models. But things may finally be swinging in a different direction. Data use coming from iPads has grown four times in just the last six months, according to data gleaned from mobile network operators by U.K.-based analytics software company Actix. And for the first time, there are two different iPad models among the top 10 most data-hungry devices, which has always only had smartphones on it.

It’s not the latest 4G-capable iPad that’s eating up all this data, though, it’s older 3G models: the iPad 2 and iPad 3 are now No. 6 and No. 7, respectively, on this list, says Actix; the rest are smartphones. There has never been a tablet, much less two, on the list of the most mobile data-hungry devices before. Actix gets this information from software it runs on the networks of eight carriers: one European, one Middle Eastern, two American and four based in the Asia Pacific region. Why is this number suddenly growing just since the end of 2012, when the iPad 2 has been around since early 2011 and the iPad 3 since early 2012? Mobile broadband subscriptions grew 45 percent faster in the first three months of 2013 than a year earlier, according to a recently published study by Ericsson.