AppleInsider Staff
Smartphone owners are nearly seven times as likely to choose native apps over mobile Web apps, new data shows. But when mobile users do turn to the Web, a majority use Apple's Safari browser.
Of the 2 hours and 42 minutes that consumers in the U.S. spend on their smartphones every day, 86 percent — all but 23 minutes - is spent in third-party apps, according to mobile analytics and advertising firm Flurry. Nearly one-third, or 32 percent, of that time can be chalked up to gaming, with social media and messaging following closely behind at 28 percent.
"The data tells a clear story that apps, which were considered a mere fad a few years ago, are completely dominating mobile, and the browser has become a single application swimming in a sea of apps," the company said.
Users spend just 14 percent of their time using web browsers, with Apple's Safari responsible for 50 percent of that total. Another 35 percent went to Google, with the rest booked by "others." There was no word on how much of that time was spent using web-based applications versus general web surfing, however.
Safari's win came despite the inclusion of both Android and iOS devices in the study, though it is not the first time that mobile web engagement has been shown to be significantly higher on iOS devices. Apple's iPhone and iPad accounted for 80 percent of mobile sales during last year's Black Friday period, for instance.
Facebook and YouTube were the most-used third-party apps at 17 percent and 4 percent, respectively.
Marko Zivkovic
Wesley Hilliard
Christine McKee
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Andrew O'Hara
39 Comments
Since Apple doesn't make a browser for Android and Android-based devices supposedly outsell iOS-based devices by wide margin one must interpret these results as most Android-based devices are not being used as "smart" devices. I have a hard time believing that Android users change their User Agent to represent an iDevice.
[quote name="SolipsismX" url="/t/176847/apples-safari-most-used-smartphone-browser-but-apps-dominate-mobile-web#post_2507952"]Since Apple doesn't make a browser for Android and Android-based devices supposedly outsell iOS-based devices by wide margin one must interpret these results as most Android-based devices are not being used as "smart" devices. I have a hard time believing that Android users change their User Agent to represent an iDevice.[/quote] Soli, if using Chrome (or other browsers) on an iPhone does it report itself as being Safari? I can't really tell and don't know enough about it to figure it out. This is the supposed user-string for Chrome on an iPhone Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 5_1_1 like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/534.46.0 (KHTML, like Gecko) CriOS/19.0.1084.60 Mobile/9B206 Safari/7534.48.3 https://developers.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/user-agent
[quote name="Gatorguy" url="/t/176847/apples-safari-most-used-smartphone-browser-but-apps-dominate-mobile-web#post_2507955"] Soli, if using Chrome (or other browsers) on an iPhone does it report itself as being Safari? I can't really tell and don't know enough about it to figure it out. https://developers.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/user-agent[/quote] I don't know but it's easy to figure out by hitting any one of the many webpages designed to display your User Agent and other brewer data. [LIST] [*] http://whatsmyuseragent.com [/LIST] But that's beside the point. Even if using Chrome on an iDevice it's still an iDevice. If Android has all these activations why are real world usage constantly lower than the iOS?
[quote name="Gatorguy" url="/t/176847/apples-safari-most-used-smartphone-browser-but-apps-dominate-mobile-web#post_2507955"] Soli, if using Chrome (or other browsers) on an iPhone does it report itself as being Safari? I can't really tell and don't know enough about it to figure it out. This is the supposed user-string for Chrome on an iPhone Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 5_1_1 like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/534.46.0 (KHTML, like Gecko) CriOS/19.0.1084.60 Mobile/9B206 Safari/7534.48.3 https://developers.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/user-agent[/quote] So where does Google's 35% come from?
[quote name="SolipsismX" url="/t/176847/apples-safari-most-used-smartphone-browser-but-apps-dominate-mobile-web#post_2507956"] I don't know but it's easy to figure out by hitting any one of the many webpages designed to display your User Agent and other brewer data. [LIST] [*] http://whatsmyuseragent.com [/LIST] But that's beside the point. Even if using Chrome on an iDevice it's still an iDevice. If Android has all these activations why are real world usage constantly lower than the iOS?[/quote] IIRC the stats vary depending on who reports them, tho I haven't bothered looking at it myself in some time. I thought some analytics firms showed Android browser share higher than iOS except on tablets where Apple was much higher. I can take a look later, but I really don't know. I agree it would be silly to chalk it up to Android users intentionally changing their user string. That's sounds ridiculous.