I was looking at comScore’s list of the top mobile apps in the US for “time spent” recently.
Here’s the list (#14 was apparently an error so I left it off):
It’s all about messengers, movies, and music. I am being somewhat inaccurate in the choice of the word movies. I should use the word video. But I like the alliteration of the M words so I’ll stick with the word movies for this post.
Movies and music make a lot of sense. I often hit the play button in the SoundCloud app and two hours later I’m still listening. And I know my kids can binge on Netflix shows for hours at a time.
But messengers is interesting. Sending a message in Kik or Whatsapp or iMessage takes almost no time. Replying to one is the same. So for messaging apps to be so well represented in this list means that we are going in and out of them so frequently that these little bits of time add up to a lot of time. Google search is in there for the same reason.
The category I’m a bit surprised to see pulling up the rear is games. I would think games would be right up near the top with messengers, movies, and music. This list is for the month of August 2015 so its not the volatility of games (a hit business if there ever were one) that causes them to be poorly represented. It’s the fact that on mobile devices in the US, we seem to like talking, listening, and watching more than playing.
I find that interesting.
