A new report from Flurry finds that smartphone and tablet owners spend an average of 2 hours and 38 minutes per day using native apps, compared to 31 minutes using mobile Web browsers. About a third of the time spent with apps goes to games, and Facebook accounts for another 18 percent of users’ time.
The number of apps used per day continues to rise steadily, and is now at 7.9. “To us, the steady growth rate indicates that the app economy is not yet experiencing saturation, as consumers steadily use more apps over time,” blogged Flurry CEO Simon Khalaf. “And while there are more apps in the store, large numbers of them have short lifespans, such as books, shows and games. Assertions that people are using fewer apps in 2012 than they did in 2010 appear to be incorrect.”
Khalaf also observed, “Five years into its existence, the app economy is thriving. We looked for possible signs of slowing, we could not find any, largely due to the fast adoption of tablets just after smartphones… Tablets and smartphones are eating up desktops, and notebooks and apps (including the Facebook app) are eating up the web and peoples’ time.”
