Guns N’ Roses. Image: jumpot hunbunlue/Shutterstock
Concertgoers in Slane were only partly paying attention to Guns N’ Roses last month, with smartphones splitting their focus.
Do you ring a friend when ‘their song’ is played at a gig, waking them up, interrupting their dinner, generally complicating things?
If you do, you’re not alone. Data from the recent Guns N’ Roses concert at Slane showed an immense volume of smartphone activity, with 778GB of data used in one day, on one network.
Three Ireland’s findings show that almost 20pc of that total (nearly 150GB) came via the data-heavy Snapchat app. Facebook, another data – and battery – drain was close behind.
Netflix, really?
Despite the entertainment on stage, Three Ireland reports that 7pc of data was used on YouTube, with 2pc on music streaming and a further 1.5pc on Netflix.
With regard to instant messaging – proof, if ever it was needed, that texting is as good as dead – WhatsApp was used by nearly 90pc of all Three customers at the gig.
Three had erected a mast at Slane for the concert to up connectivity, with Elaine Carey, chief commercial officer at the company, delighted with the findings.
“We understand that the concertgoers love to capture every moment of these experiences on their smartphones and share them online, so we were delighted to provide Guns N’ Roses fans with an incredible data experience at Slane,” she said.
Snapchat fighting back
The evidence of Snapchat’s prominence shows just how key a role the app plays in the current smartphone age.
Snapchat as expanded into an audience so large, in such a short space of time, that massive tech companies such as Facebook are busy copying as many elements of the popular app as possible. Instagram and WhatsApp, for example, have seen Snapchat-like elements added to their offering in recent months.
But Snapchat is fighting back.
For example, this week it emerged that parent company Snap spent around $1m on Ctrl Me Robotics, a small drone manufacturer based in LA. In a push for hardware – with other related moves of note – the acquisition comes after a number of rumours surrounding Snap’s drone plans.
There is also quite a lot of sense to the deal as Snap considers itself a camera company, and drones are the largest disrupters of the camera industry in decades.
Elsewhere, Snap last month acquired the geofilter patent belonging to Instagram competitor Mobli for $7.7m. It was reported that $360m of Snapchat’s $400m revenues came from geofilters.
