PacketZoom’s New Mobile Benchmarking Study Analyzes Mobile Network and App Performance
Last month, PacketZoom launched a new mobile benchmarking study that analyzes mobile network and app performance on a global scale. The company created this ongoing standard measuring millions of data points gathered from usage of mobile apps around the world, to give app developers deeper insights to create apps with better performance. This is the first time, that I am aware of, that performance insights have been presented at the mobile app level instead of merely showing carrier signal strength.
PacketZoom focuses on improving user experience on mobile apps by eliminating performance roadblocks in the mobile last mile. Mobile publishers and developers boost app performance worldwide by accelerating and improving reliability of content delivery through the integration of PacketZoom’s SDK. In the benchmark, PacketZoom measured the performance of mobile apps on live cellular and Wi-Fi networks throughout October 2016 to determine countries and networks that performed the best.
The initial results are pretty interesting:
- AT&T has the lowest number of TCP drops in the US (2.94% vs. Verizon with 3.66%)
- Sprint is far behind with over 5% of disconnects
- Verizon response time is almost 30% faster than AT&T
Countries Leading in Adoption of Advanced Cellular Technology
(*End user adoption of 4G cellular technology by country based on mobile application usage)
- Canada: 96%
- South Korea: 95%
- Japan: 93%
- Indonesia: 91%
- US: 83%
Best Response Times for Mobile Apps
(*Average round trip time from mobile app to content server as experienced by end users over cellular and WiFi networks – ms)
- France: 276 ms
- Spain: 338 ms
- Netherlands: 355 ms
- UK: 357ms
- Germany: 389 ms
Every smartphone user knows that the expected customer experience on mobile is the same as we get on the desktop. Some mobile reports show that the accepted wait time on mobile for website and app performance is about 5-6 seconds. However, there are many factors that play into the speed of a mobile website or app and with PacketZoom’s new benchmarking, hopefully the data will help developers looking to create a better mobile experience.