According to a recent report, U.S. mobile phone users are spending more time using apps than
browsing mobile websites. The findings indicate that year-over-year average app use grew
from 80 percent of consumers’ daily phone use in March 2013 to 86 percent—or from 2 hours
and 6 minutes per day to 2 hours and 19 minutes—in March 2014. Daily mobile web browsing
dropped from 31 minutes to 22 minutes. Gaming is the most-used app category (32
percent of users’ time), followed by Facebook use (17 percent), other messaging apps
including Twitter (11 percent), utility apps (8 percent) and various other categories at
smaller percentages.
Recent studies have shown that consumers prefer apps to mobile web browsing because they are more convenient and faster and easier to use. It appears, however, that most app use is focused on specific categories—gaming and social media, in particular—and not all business want to create apps, which are more costly than websites to develop and maintain. Nonetheless, mobile operators can turn to consumers’ demands for app use as ways to generate revenue and attract new subscribers, particularly as the apps begin to trump the phones’ voice and SMS features. In addition, there are the obvious connectivity fees associated with using the apps. In some cases operators have encouraged even more data use by offering customers limited access at no cost to specific apps, such as Facebook. These offers could result in users subscribing to larger data packages to receive more than just the features offered in the free versions of the
apps. MNOs can also derive revenue from advertisements that appear within the apps. This area is not as fully monetized as it could be; for example, advertisers place more ads in Google’s browser and its other products rather than on a wide variety of apps.
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