A recent report has shown that smartphones are consuming more data than tablets for the first time. The report found that smartphones are now surpassing tablets in consumption of mobile data. There were three smartphones credited with using the most data. You might have guessed the first two, iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S3, the third device was HTC's Sensation XL.

Apple has been on this list before, in 2011 the iPhone 4S, iPad 2, and original iPad were the biggest mobile data consuming devices. However, now, the landscape is changing.

A possible explanation as to why smartphones have now overtaken tablets in mobile data usage could be that the iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S3 both use fast 4G LTE radios. We carry our smartphones everywhere and now that they can surf the Web at 4G speeds. So it only makes sense that users are using mobile data more and more on these types of devices. Another possible reason is that many smartphone users are using their smartphone's built-in Wi-Fi hotspot feature to tether their tablets and laptops to access their mobile carrier's data network.

This news could certainly affect mobile carriers and determine how they try to cope with the demand of so many users using their mobile data networks. We've already seen most of them begin taking away unlimited data plans or set data caps on users they feel are consuming too much data. Or perhaps, it will make the carriers come up with better solutions for consumers instead of capping data and throttling speeds if the customer goes over their allotted data plan amount, since this trend does not look like it's going to end any time soon.