Think that applications aren’t used that much on mobile devices Think again.
TechCrunch has reported that, per a report released by mobile analytics firm (and recent Yahoo! acquisition) Flurry, apps were used quite a bit on mobile devices this past year. The growth year-over-year has increased a staggering 76 percent for the year, with Shopping-based apps leading the charge, followed by Utilities & Productivity and Messaging. Each of these based apps have managed to see triple-digit growth on their own over the past year alone.
Meanwhile, Games continue to show slow but steady progress as well, although not as quickly as other applications on the market. In addition, Music, Media and Entertainment categories also showed some slight increases, but, again, not as much as the other departments.
Flurry defined “app usage” as a user opening an app and recording some form of session with it, such as playing a quick game or browsing a website for information (for a potential sale or other purposes).
The company managed to track an impressive 2.079 trillion app sessions over the year, with the daily session record actually clocking in on New Year’s Eve of last year, with 8.5 billion sessions recorded for that day alone.
The growth of Shopping applications couldn’t be missed, as seen in the chart below. They’ve managed to increase the highest with 174 percent, while Utilities & Productivity followed closely behind with 121 percent, and Messaging (Social) was in third with 103 percent. As you can see, the growth continued across the board, but numbers dwindled with other categories, with the lowest growth being Games at 30 percent. Of course, Games were already immensely popular on mobile devices, so it looks like people are beginning to find other uses for smartphones and tablets than just playing games.
Shopping managed to surge thanks in part to pre-existing retailers launching their own devoted apps (or improving upon previously released ones) and new start-ups entering the scene, including the likes of Threadless and Curbside. From Flurry’s findings, commute time was the highest around 9 AM and around noon (during lunch time), and then once again during “prime time” around 8 PM. Utilities & Productivity saw a spike with the introduction of Office on Windows devices (via Microsoft) as well as iOS and Android. As for messaging, Facebook led the charge, not only with Facebook Messenger, but also the acquisition of the popular WhatsApp service.
More findings on the report can be found over at TechCrunch.
