Video continues to spike in mobile networks

If it wasn’t crystal clear beforehand that video was going to be primary application of the new mobile broadband era, analysis after analysis of current mobile data traffic patterns seems to be clarifying the issue.

The latest numbers from Allot Communications (NASDAQ:ALLT) show that video has not only surpassed all other services as the biggest bandwidth consumer on the mobile Internet, it’s quickly distancing itself from all other applications.

Global mobile data traffic continued its steep trek upwards in the first half of 2010, growing 68% in six months and driven by a 98% increase in video traffic, according to Allot’s semi-annual analysis of its customers data networks. Video now accounts for 35% of all mobile data traffic. It only surpassed mobile Web browsing in Q4 of last year to become the top application, but since then it has been distancing itself from other apps.

As a percentage of overall mobile data traffic, peer-to-peer traffic and HTTP downloads are declining. Web surfing is back on the rise again as consumers log in with more sophisticated smartphones, but its overall percentage of mobile traffic was in 29% at the end of second quarter. To put video’s impact in perspective, one service, YouTube accounted for 13% of all mobile data traffic, according to Allot.

That doesn’t mean other Internet services aren’t growing. Allot found that social networking services like Facebook and Twitter saw their bandwidth share increase by 200% and 310% respectively. VoIP and instant messaging grew 84% with Skype the dominant provider of VoIP services with 83% of VoIP traffic.

But even with huge growth numbers like that, the impact those services have on data consumption is small compared to that of video.