The #1 mobile app platform worldwide
Posts tagged flurry
224 Million People Now Use Apps
May 1st
A recent post by the app consulting and analysis company Flurry revealed that the monthly number of people using apps now exceeds the number of people using desktops and laptops. Each month, roughly 224 million people now use apps, as opposed to 221 million people that use desktops and laptops.
It’s interesting to compare these growing app audiences with those reached by traditional media outlets. For now, a single television show still reaches far, far more viewers than a single app. For example, the top three television shows, put together, reach an audience of about 50 million people. To reach this same audience via apps, it takes about 500 of the top apps.
This comparison may seem silly, but for businesses and advertisers, there’s a hidden difference that shouldn’t be ignored: apps allow for extraordinary segmentation and targeting. Advertising on prime-time television shows is extremely expensive and usually leads to a fair amount of waste. Viewership is broad, and can include many segments that are not relevant to a particular advertiser. Advertising on apps, in contrast, is cheaper and can deliver a better value if done properly, because a tighter user segment can be targeted.
For these reasons, in-app advertising has become a major channel for business promotion. 88% of all apps downloaded are ad-supported, and total revenue for in-app ads is projected to reach $2 billion this year.
“But wait,” you say, “I hate those little ads in my apps, and I never click them!”
The advertisers have heard you, and their “ads” are changing to adapt to the new medium of apps. As Mashable reports, sponsors are testing a number of strategies to avoid irritating people with their ads, including 1) appearing as a part of game apps themselves, 2) paying viewers for ad views, and 3) making more inventive ads that depart from the old-school static display model (e.g. an ad for the Westin Resorts appeared as a frosted screen, which the user could wipe with a finger to reveal a tropical paradise in the background).
For businesses, the message is clear: the aggregate app audience has hit another milestone of growth, and is quickly becoming a major channel that should not be ignored.
Apps Dominate The Mobile World
Apr 11th
Recently, the mobile analytics company Flurry released the results of a study that revealed that users are heavily favoring apps over mobile websites. Indeed, users are spending about 80% of their mobile usage time in apps. This equals about 2 hours each day, far more than the 30 minutes spent browsing mobile websites.
As VentureBeat writer John Koetsier put it, “The mobile war is over and the app has won.”
The app usage breakdown is what you might expect, with games making up about a third of app usage time, and social media activity making up a fifth. Apps are even being used as substitute browsers, with users looking up a business inside the Facebook framework, as opposed to going to Google to find the business’s standalone website.
Shifts in user behavior like this only serve to fuel increasing app domination.
The number of apps used each day is still growing steadily, and has been for years. In 2010, the average user launched about 7 apps each day. Now, this number has risen to about 8. This is encouraging for app developers and small businesses that are considering publishing their own apps. While some feared that the market might be reaching a saturation point, and that consumers might be getting fatigued with downloading more apps, these fears have not been realized. Consumers’ appetites for apps continue to grow, demonstrating that the app market is still young, underdeveloped, and eager for increased input.
For small businesses, this is excellent news. Some business owners are hesitant to put their own app out because competition seems high and they don’t know if there will be any interest. Research continues to show, however, that consumers are still quite eager to get new apps. And because the market is underserved, this also means that those who publish apps in the near future are still getting in at an early phase of a sector’s development, which can lead to competitive advantages.
Essentially, for those small businesses considering whether or not to publish their own app – the time is now, and the benefits are still robust.
