Flash Networks (www.flashnetworks.com), a global provider of intelligent mobile Internet solutions, says image traffic growth has surpassed video traffic growth for those markets with a high level of smart phone penetration. Image traffic grew 33% as compared with 5% growth for video traffic in the Americas and Europe for the last six months.

Where smart phone penetration is lower, primarily in Asia, video traffic is still growing faster than image traffic. Flash Networks has collected this data over the last six months from several Tier One Operator networks located in Europe, Asia and the Americas, collectively servicing over 200 million subscribers. Approximately 85% percent of the overall traffic was running on smart phones in saturated markets.

Mobile social networks such as Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook are increasing the sharing of images, which is greatly contributing to the traffic surge on mobile networks.  Flash Network's data revealed that Instagram version upgrade in September alone increased image traffic by 20% for operators in the Americas and Europe. 

Other recent reports confirm the rising popularity of sharing images over mobile networks. comScore reported a nearly 8.5-fold increase in Instagram mobile users in less than six months. Diffbot reported that 36% of all links shared on Twitter are images, and 42% of all Tumblr posts are photos.

"With all the recent noise around video traffic, operators need to ensure they are also prepared for the huge increase in images on mobile networks," says Merav Bahat, vice president of Marketing and Business Development at Flash Networks. "Fortunately optimization techniques can result in a significant data reduction without sacrificing image quality, enabling operators to cope with this latest burst in mobile data."