Mobile phone users will, in 2016, on average consume 6.5 times as much video, over eight times as much music and social media, and nearly 10 times as many games as in 2011 according to forecasts from Informa Telecoms & Media. The amount of data downloaded by the average user will increase to 14 times its current level.

As data usage grows, so does the revenue for operators – but not necessarily at the same speed. While global mobile data traffic will increase tenfold, to 39bn gigabytes by 2016, global data revenues will only double, to $627.5bn. Thats because the biggest sources of traffic are not necessarily the best earners.

“The top three data guzzlers on mobile phones over the next five years will be apps, video streaming, and web browsing – in that order,” says Guillermo Escofet, senior analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media. “Yet, the top revenue earners in 2016 will be web browsing first, followed by P2P SMS, and apps. Video streaming will represent less than 1 per cent of mobile data revenue in 2016, despite hogging a third of handset traffic.”