Data Monday: What Are Mobile Users Looking At?

by February 13, 2012

The average person looks at their phone 150 times a day. In Africa, it’s 82 times a day. So what are they looking at?

  • Not most of the apps they downloaded. 68% open only five or fewer apps at least once a week. (source).
  • In March 2011, 26% of all apps downloaded were opened only once and then never used again. 26% were used 11 times or more. Of the remaining 48% of apps: 13% are opened only twice, 9% are opened only three times, all the way to 2% that are opened 10 times and never again. (source)
  • Not ads. With 425 million mobile users, Facebook does not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products. (source).
  • Google's mobile search, which is accounting for an ever-bigger percentage of overall searches, is less profitable than standard PC-based search. (source)
  • Not phone calls. Voice usage declined the most among teens age 13-17 from an average of 685 minutes to 572 minutes. (source)
  • Text messages. The number of messages exchanged monthly hit 3,417 per teen in Q3 2011, averaging seven messages per waking hour. (source)
  • It takes 48 hours for the average person to respond to email, but they immediately respond on SMS. (source).
  • Games are the top application category used in the past 30 days. The average mobile gamer plays an average of 7.8 hours a month. Those with iPhones tend to play around 14.7 hours each month while those with Android smartphones play around 9.3 hours per month. (source)
  • Weather is the second most used application category. (source)
  • Looking up weather is the number one activity on the iPad. (source)
  • The Weather Channel had 1.1 billion online page views in October but even more people checked the weather on their phones and tablets: racking up 1.3 billion page views. (source)