Why Smart Phone & Tablet Owners Exceed Their Data Caps, January 2014 [CHART]

The site of a phone bill after going over your monthly mobile data limit isn’t pretty—yet more than half (58%) of mobile users who have a monthly quota have exceeded it, according to a January 2014 study conducted by Wakefield Research for Citrix. Browsing the internet was the No. 1 reason US smartphone and tablet users had exceeded their data limit. Watching videos—which can be a huge data suck—ranked second, cited by nearly half of respondents.

The study found that mobile video viewers who watched at least one video a month were nearly twice as likely to exceed their data limit (67%) than those who consumed mobile video less often (36%). As a result, frequent mobile video viewers showed a strong preference for sponsored data plans; 78% of those who had a monthly data limit and watched at least one mobile video a month said they would be interested in a sponsored data option, compared with 38% of those who watched less than one mobile video each month. Read the rest at eMarketer.