• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer, September 2, 2015

According to the 2^nd annual report on Consumer Mobility from the Bank of America and Flurry Analytics, reported by Simon Khalaf, SVP of Publisher Products, the US population is perpetually plugged-in, as 71% of those surveyed actually sleep with their smartphones. The first study, conducted in Q2 of 2014, uncovered the rise of a new breed of mobile users: the Mobile Addicts.

The trend is not limited to the United States, says the report, In fact, but is global.  From Q2 2014 to Q2 2015, the total population of smart devices, measured by Flurry, grew from 1.3B to 1.8B, a 38% year over year growth. Regular Users, consumers who use apps between once and 16 times daily, grew from 784 million to 985 million in the same period, a 25% increase. Super Users, consumers who use apps between 16 and 60 times daily, grew even more in that same period from 440 million to 590 million, a 34% increase.

Mobile Addicts, consumers who launch applications 60 times or more per day, are growing at the fastest rate, from 176 million in Q2 2014 to a whopping 280 million in Q2 2015, a 59% increase, says the report.

To put things in perspective, notes the report, if the number of Mobile Addicts there were in 2014 had been the population of a country, such country would have been the 8th largest in the world last year, slightly below Nigeria. In 2015, the growth of the Mobile Addicts population would have propelled that country to the 4th spot, just below the United States and ahead of Indonesia.

To better understand Mobile Addicts, the study looked at the categories of applications they are using and found that Mobile Addicts usage over-indexed in all categories. Focusing on the top five categories, in which usage by Mobile Addicts over-indexed by more than 100%, Mobile Addicts used apps in these categories more than 2 times that of average mobile consumer.

Messaging and social apps are the leading apps used by Mobile Addicts, concludes the report. Mobile Addicts use Messaging apps 6.56 times (an over-index of 556%) more than an average mobile consumer. Utilities and Productivity app usage was high as well, further validating assumptions that Mobile Addicts are using their smart device as the sole computing device and conducting every aspect of their lives on that device.

The mobile industry is moving fast. It is hard to believe that Mobile Addicts are now 280 million strong, and even harder to predict what their number will be next year. One thing is clear, says the report, the Bank of America’s founders didn’t plan that 111 years after the creation of their bank, half of its consumers will only visit one branch, the one in their pocket.

For additional information, please visit Flurry Mobile here.