People now use 10 apps a day, and spend more time on them: App Annie

Photo credit: David Rothwell.

People are using 10 apps a day worldwide on average, says a new report from mobile data analytics firm App Annie. In a month, they use 30 apps.

Brazil, India, and China lead in the number of apps used daily, suggesting they’re becoming a part of everyday lives in these big smartphone markets.

Source: App Annie.

Users in every country analyzed are spending more time on their apps, compared to previous years. In a ranking of time spent on apps by users, South Korea is on top. Of the time spent on apps, Koreans put a quarter of that on games. Social networking and communication account for more than half of user time in runner-ups Brazil and Mexico.

In fourth position is Japan, where games are hugely popular like in South Korea. India is fifth, but the time spent on apps is rising fastest in the country – from around two hours previously to over two-and-a-half hours per day in the first quarter of this year.

Over 80 percent of users’ time is spent on apps other than the top app in a country. So even if Facebook and WhatsApp grab user time, there’s time for other apps as well.

Source: App Annie.

Analysis of user behavior in the US shows dating and productivity apps get the highest number of sessions in a day – four on average. Finance and productivity apps have less than a minute per session, whereas transportation apps get over three minutes per session on average. Taking both the number of sessions and time spent on them into account, transportation, dating, and travel apps hog user time.

Performance metrics and user engagement strategies for apps would thus vary by user behavior. “The variation between categories in time and sessions per day means that
there is no one-size-fits-all app strategy,” points out the App Annie report.

App Annie tracks a large sample size of smartphone users and combines that with proprietary data sets for its reports.