It may not have seemed like a month that changed everything, but if speculation by Flurry Analytics proves to be correct, this month will be the first in history where Americans spent more time using mobile apps than the full-on internet via web browsers.
“Our analysis shows that, for the first time ever, daily time spent in mobile apps surpasses desktop and mobile web consumption,” explains Flurry’s Charles Newark-French in a blog post, adding, “This stat is even more remarkable if you consider that it took less than three years for native mobile apps to achieve this level of usage, driven primarily by the popularity of iOS and Android platforms.”
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The company estimates that users spend, on average, 9% more time using mobile apps than the full web, thanks to a stunning growth rate for the former (91% over the last year, from 43 minutes per day to over 81 minutes; web usage has also been increasing, but more slowly, at 16% growth over the last twelve months).
By far, gaming dominates the average mobile app user’s time – 47% of mobile app usage in May was game-related – with social networking and news the next most popular activities (32% and 9% of time, respectively).
That social network number is particularly interesting when internet usage is also factored in: Facebook alone accounts for almost 19% of internet usage, according to Flurry, marking again the importance of social networking in all online activity. If mobile growth continues at this pace, it’ll be interesting to see how content providers change their strategies to follow the audience.
Maybe the New York Post‘s attempt to force readers to purchase their app wasn’t so off-base after all…