This year, US mobile Internet users will be spending 73% of their daily mobile activities within five app categories: digital audio, social networking, gaming, video and messaging.
These are the findings from eMarketer, which just adjusted some of its previous estimates of how much time consumers will be spending in-app.
In September 2016, the research firm reported that US smartphone users would be spending 85.7% of their time using apps and just 14.3% using the mobile web.
Source eMarketer
For 2017, listening to audio on apps such as Spotify and Pandora has become the leading in-app activity in terms of time spent.
Cathy Boyle, Analyst, eMarketer, says:
“That’s not surprising, given the passive nature of music listening. Digital audio apps often run in the background – especially on smartphones – while people go about their day.”
The company predicts that adult mobile app users will be spending around 41 minutes per day listening to digital audio using an app on their smartphone or tablet.
App usage is also seriously outgrowing mobile web usage. That could be potentially bad news for Google.
However, the distinction between what’s app time versus web time isn’t all that clear just yet. Boyle explains:
“Mobile webpages can be viewed from inside a native app, which means a person could be spending time with mobile’s two channels simultaneously. That raises the question of whether the mobile web is being properly credited for its share of that combined viewing time.”
Indeed, some of the time that is being allocated to in-app may be mobile web time instead.
Furthermore, comScore findings show that mobile audience growth may be driven by the web as opposed to apps, despite the latter’s dominance when it comes to time. Mobile web audiences are 3x the size of app audiences and growing twice as rapidly.
Source comScore
The post Smartphone users are spending more time in apps this year, but mobile audience growth is greater on the web appeared first on Business of Apps.
