Apps Driving Attention

The mobile platform, meaning tablets and smartphones, now account for 60% of total digital media time spent according to comScore. This is a 10 point jump from 50% just a year ago. On top of that, mobile apps accounted for 51% of all digital media time spent in May 2014. Many of the content categories like radio, photos and maps are becoming almost exclusively mobile. Digital radio and photos both generate 96% of their engagement from mobile while maps and instant messaging get 90% of interaction from mobile devices.

You might be wondering, like I did, where do social networks come in since it seem like almost everyone updates their social feeds through mobile. Social is actually the #1 category for overall digital engagement taking about 20% of overall digital time spent and gets 71% of it's activity from mobile. It, social media engagement on mobile, has grown 55% over the last year and has accounted for 31% of all growth of internet engagements.

So who is driving the mobile app explosion? Teenagers. About 60% of 12 to 17 year olds had a smartphone in 2013, topping even the 45+ crowd for smartphone ownership, according to Arbitron and Edison Research. The app money makers are not the initial charge for the program but all the in-app purchases along with the ads attached to the app.

Mobile is clearly the new way we consume digital content and continues to grow. We are also interacting with specific apps rather than browsing and those apps are growing at an amazing pace. Today's infrastructure needs to be even more flexible, intelligent and resilient to handle the surge. And ultimately, the apps and the content/experience they provide need to be highly available and delivered quickly and securely to the person...just like any other typical application.

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Related:

• Major Mobile Milestones in May: Apps Now Drive Half of All Time Spent on Digital
• Who's driving the mobile app economy? Our kids
• Invasion of Privacy - Mobile App Infographic Style
• The Applications of Our Lives
• What's in Your Smartphone?

Technorati Tags: mobile,apps,tablet,smartphone,social media,humans,society,silva,security

 

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Is TV's Warm Glowing Warming Glow Fading?

If Homer only knew back in 1994 that smartphone mobile apps would someday start to creep into precious TV viewing time, he probably would have written, 'No Smartphone and No Specialty Beer Make Homer Go Crazy,' in the Simpson's classic Treehouse of Horror V.  It's no surprise that time spent on mobile apps have overtaken time spent on desktop web usage.  Typical smartphone owners have an average of 41 apps per device, 9 more than they had last year according to the Nielsen report, State of the Appnation – A Year of Change and Growth in U.S. Smartphones.   Mobile app usage has jumped 35% from 94 minutes a day a year ago to almost 130 minutes a day today while desktop web usage dropped from 72 to 70 minutes a day, according to Flurry.  Almost twice as much time mobile app'ing than web browsing.  Many of us probably spend more than two hours a day fiddling with mobile apps.  And the time spent doing that is now challenging our beloved TV viewing time. 

Based on United States Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2010 and 2011, Flurry estimates that Americans watch about 168 minutes of television a day.  They expect that tablet and smartphone apps will compete with TV as the primary method for media consumption.  Personally, I think that might occur in many households, but with internet capable TVs and our love of the big screen, I don't think it'll go away.  In fact, I think the TV will become more of a communications hub.  Simply a big monitor on the wall that handles video calls, closed circuit cameras, streaming media, broadcast media, web surfing and any other IP related task.  Moving around and mobile, cool...but sitting on my couch, I'd rather look at a larger screen than some 5 inch display.  Just me.  I've mentioned in the past that, I think that TVs, cars and any other connected device could be considered BYOD in the near future.  Why wouldn’t a mobile employee want secure VDI access from his car’s Ent/GPS display?  Why couldn’t someone check their corporate email from the TV during commercials?

The category of top apps is also shifting.  While gaming is still the top app at 43% (down from 50%), entertainment apps and utilities gained more of our attention at the expense of games and social networking (30% to now 26% of our time).  Clearly mobile apps are touching many aspects of our life and as more BYOD deployments occur in 2013, there will probably be more business specific apps on our devices and our daily 'media' consumption will rise.  Yet, I gotta believe that (at least in the U.S.), we love our televisions so much and I have a hard time thinking that we're going to shove them aside for something we can carry in our pocket.  At least in the home.  And as more TVs get cameras, are internet ready, have our favorite streaming channels loaded, allow us to check email and can browse the web (all the things a smartphone can do with the processing power), I think we may gravitate back to a family on the living room couch.  Do you think mobile apps will overtake TV one day?

As an aside, I was having a little trouble coming up with a blog topic to start 2013 but anytime I can include a 1990's reference, a Simpsons quote and BYOD in the same entry, that's a pretty good start to the year.
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References:

• Time Spent In Mobile Apps Is Starting To Challenge Television, Flurry Says
• Mobile Apps: We Interrupt This Broadcast
• What’s in Your Smartphone?
• SmartTV, Smartphones and Fill-in-the-Blank Employees
• 8 beers Americans no longer drink
• "The Simpsons" Treehouse of Horror V
• I was raised on TV and I turned out TV!
• Smart TVs offer web browsing, instant video streaming
• F5 BYOD Solutions

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