While statisticians love to compare how many people are using the iPhone versus Android, Blackberry and other
smartphones, a new study shows that Verizon Wireless smartphones are churning
through 25 percent more data than the iPhone on AT&T.

Validas, which analyzed more than 20,000 consumer
wireless bills dated between January and May 2010, found that Verizon
smartphones are chomping and average of 421 megabytes per month compared to 338
megabytes per month for the popular iPhone.

Ed Finegold, executive vice president of analytics for
Validas, said nearly twice as many Verizon Wireless smartphone users are consuming 500
megabytes to 1 gigabyte per month compared to AT&T iPhone users.”

In a proud display of statistics, Validas looked at
several different data consumption metrics. While Validas singled out the
iPhone even though it isn’t the only smartphone AT&T carries, it didn’ts explicitly
say what smartphones on Verizon are consuming the data.

Are they Android devices, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, or
all three?

It’s not Blackberry, according to Validas, which excluded
RIM devices because they do not follow the same consumption patterns iPhone and
Android devices do thanks to “data compression techniques.”

It’s likely then, that Validas is referring to Windows
Mobile devices such as the Samsung Omnia II, Verizon HTC Imagio, Verizon LG
Fathom.

Validas is also referring to the Droid
units that have proven popular sellers for Verizon: the Motorola Droid, Droid Incredible and new Droid X.

The Droid
has sold millions of units and the Incredible and Droid X are so popular they are
sold out all over the country until next month.

There is anecdotal evidence of high data consumption for
the Droid X. Jennifer Byrne, Verizon business development executive director,
said Verizon is seeing “something like 5x the data usage of any other
device.”

Other interesting points Finegold
found are that more than 4 percent of Verizon smartphones consume more than 2
gigabytes per month, as opposed to just 1.6 percent of iPhones.

However, thanks to the iPhone AT&T continues to lead
with 71.2 percent of lines with data usage, up from 58.4 percent, with increase
in mean usage per user from 111.9 MB to 149.6 MB.

Verizon, which leapt in mean data usage per user from
48.2 MB to 147.2 MB, saw its data usage lines grow from 33.4 percent to 42.9
percent.

T-Mobile posted the second largest percentage increase in
mean data usage per user, from 44.6 MB to 120.6 MB, with virtually no growth in
overall percentage of lines with data usage.

Sprint increased from 36.9 percent of lines with data
usage to 49.9 percent. However, neab usage per user decreased from 166.5 MB to
133.4 MB. This was due to an increase in the percentage of users consuming 50 MBs
or less per month.

Validas is finalizing a comprehensive study that will flesh
out its data points.