Time Spent In Apps Up 63 Percent Over Past Two Years, But Apps Used Monthly Show Little Change

Today’s app stores each may host well over a million apps, but consumers only use roughly 26 or 27 of these per month, according to new data from Nielsen out today. However, the time they spend engaging with those apps is increasing – up 63 percent over the past two years, the study found.

In the fourth quarter of 2012, consumers spent 23 hours and two minutes per month engaging with apps. That climbed to 37 hours and 28 minutes in the fourth quarter of 2014.

In other words, for those apps that make it into the lucky two dozen-plus per month that actually get used, then they’re likely being used fairly heavily.

This is not the first time Nielsen has suggested that there’s an upper limit to how many apps consumers can use on a monthly basis. The firm reported last summer that the number of apps seeing monthly use has only slightly increased over the years. On average, consumers used 23.3 apps per month in 2011, 26.5 apps in 2012 and 26.8 apps in 2013.

The most recent numbers for Q4 2014 are broken down by gender: men use 27.2 apps per month compared with 26.3 apps per month for women. Or, on average, consumers today use 26.7 apps per month.

The data is collected with permission from U.S. smartphone users by way of a background app on Android, and on iOS, Nielsen logs data as iOS traffic is routed through a proxy. Its panel distribution is 58 percent Android and 42 percent iOS users, and is collected from a sizable group of 5,000 panelists across various demographic groups, races and ethnicities.

Another notable finding relates to how the different races and ethnicities engage with apps. The firm found that African-Americans use the most apps per month (30.3), but they’re also the most heavily engaged users, spending nearly 43 hours per month in apps. Hispanics, meanwhile, spend 41 hours and 31 minutes per month across 27.9 apps on average. Asian-Americans spend 27 hours and 14 minutes per month, while white non-Hispanic users spend 35 hours and 25 minutes per month in apps.

Nielsen says the “entertainment” category of apps is driving the most usage. However, it defines this group of apps rather broadly, saying that entertainment apps can be mobile games or even apps where users check the weather or sports scores.

That being said, this group of apps saw a 13 percent increase in unique audience year-over-year as of fourth-quarter 2014. And that audience is spend nearly three hours more on apps over the same period – up 26 percent from the prior year.

The gaming subcategory, unsurprisingly, saw the most usage, with 76 percent of entertainment apps users playing at least one game in Q4 2014, and time spent increase by 1:35 per month to 10:02. Music was the second most popular subcategory, followed by video and movies.

Yet, despite the growth of the app marketplaces themselves, which has introduced a ever-expanding selection of apps to choose from, app makers are still having to fight each other to be one of the small handful of apps that get used regularly. While some apps, like Facebook, are always in this short list, others, like games, are played then disposed of, freeing up space for a new title to snag a spot.

The disposable nature of gaming apps has also begun to spread to the wider App Store in recent months, where some titles – think Yo, or that brief MyIdol craze – are wildly popular for months, weeks or sometimes only days, before being forgotten on back screens.

Comments

How ad-free subscriptions could solve Facebook

At the core of Facebook’s “well-being” problem is that its business is directly coupled with total time spent on its apps. The more hours you pass on the social network, the more ads you see and click, the more money it earns. That puts its plan to make using Facebook healthier at odds with its finances, restricting how far it’s willing to go to protect us from the harms of over use. The advertising-supported model comes with some big benefits, though. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly said that “We will always keep Facebook a free service for everyone.” Ads lets Facebook remain free for those who don’t want to pay, and more importantly, for those around the world who couldn’t afford to. Ads pay for Facebook to keep the lights on, research and develop new technologies, and profit handsomely in a way that attracts top talent and further investment. More affluent users with more buying power in markets like the US, UK, and Canada command higher ad prices, effectively...

Windows 7 and 8.1 Update to Windows 10 automatically

Windows 10 downloader While it might be a bit too early to start getting excited over the Windows 10 update , which isn't expected to arrive until summer, Microsoft seems to already be warming up people's computers just the same. A recommended, and therefore purely optional, update for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows 8.1 has been discovered to be laying the groundwork for those machines' eventual upgrade to Windows 10. Although the Windows 10 release date was not announced officially, the details of this update also reveal how Microsoft might try to convince users to update to the latest Windows 10 version. The KB3035583 update "enables additional capabilities for Windows Update notifications when new updates are available to the user", which sounds pretty common. That is, until you dig into the update files and see a certain GWXUXWorker.exe which, upon further inspection, would actually "Download Windows 10". So this rather ...

Anyline Raises €1.5M To Let You Add Optical Character Recognition To Your App

Anyline , the Austrian startup that provides mobile OCR tech to enable developers to add text recognition to their own apps, has raised €1.5 million in funding. The list of investors is interesting, too. It includes angel investor Johann ‘Hansi’ Hansmann, busuu co-founder Bernhard Niesner, Lukas Püspök, and the U.S.-based VC-fund iSeed Ventures. However, most notable is that the round was led by Gernot Langes-Swarovski Group. As one investor put it to me, “the fact that the Swarovski family led the round shows that finally ‘old’ money is moving into Austrian startups”. Offering its own mobile Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology — which uses a smartphone’s camera to accurately scan and recognise any kind of text, code or number — Anyline co-founder and CEO Lukas Kinigadner tells me the startup is built on the premise that “people screw up a lot”. “Mistakes happen easily when you’re writing down a 10-digit-number and then have to type it in again a few moments later...

Three Reasons Why You Need Better Personal Cyber security

From the infamous Sony hack to the recent WannaCry virtual catastrophe that affected over 300,000 computers, the need for reliable personal cyber security has never been more apparent. Rubica's skilled team of experts want to remind every one of the importance of cyber security and the three reasons why it is becoming a more pressing issue every day. With top-notch personal cyber security, most attacks are preventable. 1. Larger Number Of Attacks Americans have heard of the most notable attacks on major corporations or government entities over the past several years. However, most people who are not in the information security field do not learn just how much the attack frequency is growing. The number of cyber attacks carried out worldwide in 2015 was quadruple a number of attacks recorded in 2013. Although the cost associated with the number of annual recorded attacks is in the $500 billion range right now, experts say that it will grow well into the trillions by ...

The Withings Go Is A Cheap Little Activity Tracker

Withings has one more thing up its sleeve, a new activity tracker. This isn’t a new version of the Pulse or Activité. This is a brand new activity tracker. And the best part is that it only costs $69. The Withings Go uses an always-on E Ink display like the one on your Kindle or original Pebble. It’s very power efficient but it’s also a black and white display. But the good thing about this kind of display is that the Withings Go uses a button cell battery and the battery lasts 8 months. This new device tracks your steps, distance, running activity and swimming activity. You can also use it to track your sleep cycles. Compared to other entry-level activity trackers, you can do quite a lot. You don’t have to switch between activities — the device switches automatically. And of course, you can get your data in the Withings Health Mate app on iOS and Android. The Withings Go will be available in Q1 2016. Now the question is whether people want ...

Exciting Technology

Search This Blog