China Surpasses UK in Terms of App Usage, Billions of Sore Thumbs Reported [INFOGRAPHIC]

The Infographic of the Day series visually expresses important stories from Asia and the world of technology.

Some new stats and infographics from Flurry Analytics show how mobile app usage up to October this year is growing in China at a faster pace than anywhere else in the world. It also shows that China has recently surpassed the UK in terms of app session market share – at least on the apps that this system covers.

China, therefore, is riding high on the global apps wave, which is estimated to reach 25 billion downloaded apps on both Android and iOS this year – with that expected to double next year.

All these stats cover the time from January this year up to October, giving us a clear picture of shifting trends in app engagement around the world.

First up, Flurry Analytics tracked app usage sessions – a total of 20 billion sessions across the 120,000 apps it surveyed. It shows app usage in the dominant US shrinking noticeably throughout the year, with the whole rest of the world catching up quickly, especially as Android devices get cheaper, and more people grab Apple’s iPhone as well.

The countries ranked second to tenth in the world – the UK, Canada, Australia, France Germany, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, and China – saw app usage times increase by a factor of 2.7, so that they account for 31 percent of the world’s app sessions now.

The other 217 countries combined increased to 22 percent.

China saw the fastest growth in usage across this period, sky-rocketing 870 percent – four-times the average amongst other growth countries such as India, Thailand, and Russia.