Stat Watch: Mobile's Impact on Brains & Business

Written by Peter Devereaux | May 1, 2017 5:00:00 AM

Mobile devices have changed the digital experience in ways most never considered.

As far back as 2014, a report in the research journal Current Biology indicated that when people spend time interacting with their smartphones via touchscreen, it actually changes the way their thumbs and brains work together. Researchers found that more touchscreen use translates directly into greater brain activity.

Flash forward a few years, and one has to imagine our brains and our thumbs are working overtime as device time has increased.

Flurry released its annual "State of Mobile" report in March 2017 and found that the average U.S. consumer spends five hours a day on mobile devices (a 20 percent increase in time spent compared to Q4 2015). Where are they spending their time? One word: apps.

Flurry reported that total time spent in mobile applications grew by 69 percent year over year. A deeper look into the data reveals that 50 percent of that time is spent in social, messaging, media and entertainment applications.

As enterprises consider whether or not to build a branded app, they will need to really question the investment's value-add to end-users and their enterprises, considering where the majority of in-app time is currently spent.

According to App Annie, the top five apps by downloads in 2016, worldwide for iOS and Google Play combined were: Facebook, WhatsApp Messenger, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and Snapchat. It is the games category, unsurprisingly, that still leads in revenue, generating the most app store revenue across iOS (75 percent) and Google Play (90 percent).

Explore more statistics which provide confirmation that mobile has had a significant impact on businesses and their users...

41%

Smartphones accounted for 41 percent of retail website visits and 21 percent of overall sales during holidays 2016 (Nov. 1 to Dec. 31).

(Adobe, 2017)

93%

Mobile banking has become an everyday activity among consumers, and the vast majority of finance companies are optimistic about increasing revenues through mobile channels in 2017-93 percent of companies expect mobile website sales will increase, and 92 percent expect mobile app sales will increase.

(Performance Horizon, 2017)

1 in 7

Messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, QQ Instant Messenger and Line account for nearly 1 in 7 minutes for some non-U.S. markets, and led to a decline in standard SMS messaging.

(comScore, 2017)

5

No doubt as a result of mobile's popularity, company usage of location-based marketing is on the rise in most countries with a five percent increase in the U.S. from 2016 to 2017, six percent in Canada, seven percent in the UK and three percent in Singapore.
(The LBMA, 2017)

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