New data from Parks Associates (www.parksassociates.com) shows that more than 70% of U.S. smartphone users watch at least one short streaming video clip every day.

Parks Associates' survey shows consumers are embracing many new use cases as their smartphones become more intelligent and multifunctional. Voice calls and texting are still the dominant activities, but 80% of smartphone owners use social networking apps at least once a day and 35% spend an hour or more on this activity.

"Consumer appetite for mobile data is very strong, but currently most subscribers use less than half of their allotted data, while those with high data plans use even less," said Harry Wang, director, Health & Mobile Product Research, Parks Associates. "For mobile operators, pushing consumers to sign up for a bigger data plan will have its limits. More and more consumers will start to compare payment to data usage and discover that they are eating a small portion but paying the price of a family-sized meal.”

According to Parks Associates, more than 20% of smartphone users spend more than 30 minutes each day watching short streaming video clips (such as YouTube clips or music videos). More than 40% of smartphone users watch long streaming videos at least once a day (such as movies or complete TV shows), and the majority of them spend more than 30 minutes per day on this activity. Parks Associates analysts note that mobile operators will continue to explore new and novel strategies to attract mobile data subscribers.

"AT&T is looking to leverage its acquisition of DIRECTV to build its mobile data business by re-introducing its offer of unlimited data as a reward to customers who sign up for the satellite TV service," Wang said.

Data sharing continues to play a big role in mobile app usage, Parks Associates says. Roughly one-half of U.S. smartphone owners with a limited data plan share data between multiple devices, and 87% of them share data among multiple smartphones.