Feb 28, 2013 - Cisco has analyzed the data and released facts about mobile data traffic during 2012. The findings have been published in the Cisco Visual Networking Index Global Mobile Data Forecast update for 2012 to 2017. Here are the salient points.

■ Global mobile data traffic grew 70 percent in 2012.
■ 2012 mobile data traffic was nearly 12 times the size of the entire global Internet in 2000.
■ Mobile video traffic exceeded 50 percent for the first time in 2012.
■ Mobile network connection speeds more than doubled in 2012.
■ In 2012, a fourth-generation (4G) connection generated 19 times more traffic on average than a non-4G connection.
■ The top 1 percent of mobile data subscribers generate 16 percent of mobile data traffic, down from 52 percent at the beginning of 2010.
■ Average smartphone usage grew 81 percent in 2012.
■ Smartphones represented only 18 percent of total global handsets in use in 2012, but represented 92 percent of total global handset traffic.
■ Globally, 33 percent of total mobile data traffic was offloaded onto the fixed network through Wi-Fi or femtocell in 2012.
■ Android data use is now higher than iPhone data use.
■ In 2012, the number of mobile-connected tablets increased 2.5-fold to 36 million, and each tablet generated 2.4 times more traffic than the average smartphone.