• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, April 24, 2014

I’ve been monitoring the gap between power and novice users for some time, since the market direction could have a direct impact on mobile commerce.

For example, more shoppers using apps vs. mobile websites can affect how retailers develop and introduce mobile shopping innovations to their customers. It also can help determine how much resource merchants devote to apps or mobile websites.

Now it looks like more mobile app users may be moving over to the power user side.

In a new piece of research, Flurry Analytics studied data from 500,000 apps across 1.3 billion devices and found that on average a consumer launches apps 10 times a day.

More interesting is the difference in the volume of app usage from a year ago.

Last year there were 639 million regular users, defined as those who open apps fewer than 16 times a day and there were 362 million heavy users, those who used 16 or more apps a day.

The gap between the two was 277 million.

The app usage today is getting closer to more of an even split, with 784 million regular users compared to 616 million heavy users, a difference of 168 million.

If the trend continued, we could end up with a market split with half of consumers using a relatively small number of apps a day and the other half being very active.

There always be a group that uses mobile devices to access websites, just as consumers will continue to visit physical stores.

However, app activity looks to be on the rise, with the growth of power users on a faster pace than regular users.

This could be an early indicator of a move to more mobile shopping through apps. Then the inherent power of apps could be utilized by more consumers.