Smartphone, tablet users spending more time in apps than on the web says study

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Web Browsing vs. App Usage on mobile devices

A recent study by Flurry Analytics claims that mobile device users are now spending more of their time within apps than browsing the web, reversing previous trends. While both activities have increased over a year ago, mobile app usage has grown faster and is now more popular than web surfing on smartphones and tablets.

Flurry uses data that is obtained by tracking usage over 140,000 different applications. The report says that mobile device users spend 94 minutes per day within apps, while only browsing the web on their device for 72 minutes. A year ago, web browsing accounted for 70 minutes per day, and apps were used 66 minutes per day. Flurry says that the Facebook app has been a large driver in shifting usage away from the web as more users discover that it is easier to use the native app than to browse to Facebook with the web browser. In June 2011, users were spending 33 minutes per day at Facebook.com on their mobile device - now they are there only 24 per day.

Despite the popularity of the Facebook app, games still account from the largest time suck on mobile devices. Forty-nine percent of time spent in apps goes to games, while 30 percent is used for social media activities. Doing something actually productive, like say consuming news content, only accounts for 6 percent of time spent. It would be interesting to see how much time is spent in email apps, but Flurry does not break out this metric, only offering an 8 percent figure for "other" activities (Entertainment takes up the remaining 7 percent). [via CNN]

Mobile App Consumption by Category