• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, January 6, 2015

Flurry, Yahoo's mobile analytics company, has released year-end review numbers for mobile applications, and some of those numbers come from wearable devices.

The data reveals a shift from mobile messaging to more complex tasks.

Overall, application use on mobile devices grew 76% from 2013 to 2014.

The growth in the lifestyle and shopping 174% — made the biggest jump in 2014, compared with the prior year, showing that people have become more comfortable with their mobile devices for everyday tasks, not just for gaming and entertainment. Utilities and productivity grew 121%. Messaging and social followed at 103%; health and fitness, 89%; travel, 89%; sports, 74%; news and magazines, 49%; music, media and entertainment, 33%; and games, 30%.

The U.S. Consumer Electronics Sales and Forecasts, the semiannual industry report released Tuesday by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), estimates overall wearable unit sales will reach 30.9 million units, 61% compared with last year, and generate $5.1 billion in revenue in 2015, up 133%, respectfully.

Flurry Analytics tracked 2.079 trillion sessions last year, including applications on wearables. Putting that number in perspective, there is nearly 7 billion people on the plant. That equates to tracking 1.1 sessions for every living sole on the plant, per Simon Khalaf, Flurry president and CEO.

He defines a session as a start and a stop that includes more than 15 seconds of use on any device running Apple's iOS, Google's Android, Microsoft's Windows, and Java mobile operating systems. That number includes wearables and smart TVs, but the vast majority of sessions belong to phones and tablets.

On Dec. 31, Flurry estimates the world set another daily session record with 8.5 billion sessions as people celebrated the New Year chatting, sharing, looking for rides, and navigating New Year’s Eve. The data should help brands improve the application. The better the applications, the more consumers will use them.

"It's the convenience of the mobile device that will provide a great opportunity for mobile advertising," Khalaf said. "If you could unplug your TV set and take it shopping, you would find advertisers think very different when it comes to advertising on TV compared with other media."

A discussion with Leo Polanowski, head of client services at Yahoo, last month at the MediaPost Search Insider Summit revealed Yahoo's focus on Gemini and mobile. While Khalaf declined to comment, it makes sense to think of Flurry's analytics as the glue supporting the move by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer to build out its mobile ad platform Gemini.