Mobile app analytics firm Flurry is releasing a new report today comparing the daily engagement of smartphone users on mobile apps vs. web browsing on the PC. For web analytics, Flurry used data from comScore and Alexa and for mobile application usage, the startup used its own analytics, which now counts 500 million aggregated, anonymous use sessions per day across more than 85,000 applications. Flurry says that this accounts for approximately one third of all mobile application activity. While this is an imperfect methodology, it does point to the rise of mobile apps in our lives.
Flurry says that daily time spent in mobile apps has now surpassed web consumption. The average user now spends 9% more time using mobile apps than the Internet. In June users spent an average of 81 minutes daily on mobile apps, compared to 74 minutes on the web.
This compares to 66 minutes on mobile apps daily in December of 2010, and 70 minutes spent daily on the web. And June, the average user spent just under 43 minutes a day using mobile applications versus an average 64 minutes using the Internet.
Flurry says that the growth in mobile app usage is a result of more sessions during the day per user, as opposed to an increase in session length. So basically, users are checking Twitter and Foursquare more often as opposed to spending more time in the apps in any given session.
Flurry also took a deep dive into where mobile app users are spending their time. Flurry captured time spent per category from May 2011 across all apps it tracks (more than 85,000). Games and Social Networking categories dominate, capturing 47 percent and 32 percent on consumer time spent daily, respectively. Combined, these two categories control 79 percent of consumers’ total app time. Time spent on news apps follows with 9 percent share, with entertainment capturing a 7 percent share.
Flurry didn’t include information about time spent on the mobile web, which I’d also find interesting compared to time spent browsing the web on a computer. But the stats above certainly put Facebook’s mobile strategy and Project Spartan in context. As smartphone usage continues to grow, we’re going to see more tech companies pursue aggressive mobile strategies. What it will come down to is who will take a bigger piece of the pie when it comes to user engagement.
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