Flurry Analystics recently released a report on how people use their smartphones. Being the fifth annual report, this study monitored 300,000 applications and the usage patterns of almost one billion different users, so needless to say, these states should be fairly representative of the general usage pattern of users. After all their research, they were able to draw up the following chart showing the usage patterns of the typically user as well as some interesting conclusions.
According to Flurry users spend an average of 2 hours and 38 minutes a day on their phone. Of this time 20% is spent browsing the internet and 18% of Facebook. Flurry noted that the similarity in usage patterns of Facebook and internet browsing is probably due to the usage patterns of the user. When users go through their Facebook News Feeds they not only find photos and statuses, but also links to articles, stories etc. By clicking these links, they then open up the browser which most likely causes the close tie in usage between these two.
The most interesting area of the report is that 32% of the time we spend on our smartphones is gaming. This shouldn’t really be seen as a shock because the Gameboy is the most popular gaming platform of all time (excluding PC) so the market for mobile gaming is definitely there. Add to that the ever improving hardware on phones with the next-generation of processors on the horizon, the graphical fidelity of mobile games will increase, as will the quality of games. Not only do we have simple and fun games such as Angry Birds, but we also have some premium games such as Sword and Sworcery, Dead Trigger 2, all of which feature an extensive single-player campaign, making games an even bigger time sink. The emergence of platforms such as Nvidia Shield and the OUYA will no doubt lead to even better games being developed for Android that will then find their way onto the Play Store and into our gaming libraries.
The report also noted how users have changed in their app using habits. The average user now uses 7.9 applications, up from 7.2 apps from 2 years ago. The increase in usage of applications is backed up by the results of the study showing that 37% of applications currently being used weren’t being used last year, up from 17% two years ago. This result suggests that new applications are being released everyday and the adoption rate of these applications is also fairly high despite claims that the market for mobile applications have now plateaued, so the term ‘there is an app for that’ is probably ringing truer than ever.
