Consumers Up App Usage, Especially Entertainment

With no significant slowdown in sight, the time users spent consuming media in apps increased 38.5%, year-over-year.

That’s according to a new report from Flurry, which found that the average U.S. consumer now spends 133 minutes per day consuming media in apps.

“It’s important to note that the daily 133 minutes/day spent is over and above everything else consumers do on mobile, including messaging, email, exchanging photos, using maps, shopping, etc.,” Simon Khalaf, SVP at Flurry parent Yahoo, notes in the report.

Khalaf also attributes the healthy growth to the rise of teens engaging in “communitainment” -- or modes of communication that also entertain.

“Communitainment, or communication for the sole purpose of entertainment, is not your standard chat or exchanging pictures over social networks,” Khalaf explains. “This is (live) streaming to entertain each other on dedicated apps like live.ly, musical.ly and Houseparty, which have been App Store Top 100 strong holds for a while.”

Compared to the year before, of course, growth in the time users spent consuming media in apps did slow over the past year. From 2014 to 2015, Flurry recorded that rate of growth at 108%.

The growth in 2015 came mostly from what Flurry characterizes as “entertainment” apps like YouTube, Netflix and Hulu, as well as social apps, like Facebook and Snapchat.

Thanks to teens becoming avid “streamers,” Live content is finally “happening” on mobile, according to Khalaf.

“Many still believe this is a fad, but it is hard to look at the data (and astounding growth) and not see a phenomenon taking hold."

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