Consumer Behavior Driven By Mobile Apps

The debate regarding mobile apps versus Web consumption is getting hotter and hotter - and clearer and clearer. The rate of adoption, according to Mobile analytics firm Flurry, is outpacing both the PC revolution of the 80's and the Internet boom of the 90's.

Since 2007, in fact, more than 500 million iOS and Android smartphones and tablets have been activates and by the end of 2012, Flurry estimates that the cumulative number of those devices actives will surpass 1 billion.

What's even more impressive is that roughly 40 billion applications have already been downloaded from the App Store and Android Market. In the summer of of 2011, Flurry's published a report on how the average smartphone user began spending more time in their mobile apps than they do browsing the Web. Flurry just updated its data and found that the usage gap just keeps getting bigger.

Interactive consumption has continued to change over the last 18 months between the Web and mobile native apps according to Flurry. The chart from Flurry above indicates that smartphone and tablet users now spend over 90 minutes each day using applications while time spend on the Web has shrunk. What this means is that users are replacing their website usage with applications. The growth is slowing however. The time spend in mobile apps rose 23 percent from December 2010 to June 2011 but just over 15% from June 2011 to December 2011.