Worldwide Usage Of Mobile Apps Jumps 115 Percent In 2013

Analytics released today by mobile measurement and advertising platform Flurry have revealed that worldwide mobile app use grew by 115 percent throughout 2013.

Tracking usage sessions for 400,000 apps in a wide range of categories, from gaming to news to music, the results found widespread growth throughout the entire market. This was headed up by a 203 percent growth in the usage of messaging and social apps compared to 2012, with the huge user communities of social and photo sharing apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Snapchat all contributing to produce a tripling of growth year-on-year.

“2014 will be a crucial year for these applications,” said Simon Khalaf from Flurry, “(it) will determine whether they will remain independent, but highly frequented applications, or become killer mobile platforms and distribution channels”

Year-on-year growth

Flurry also highlighted a few examples of what it saw as particularly innovative moves from companies in 2013 which it felt helped advance the communication sector forward.

One such example was Korea-owned and Japan-based app LINE, which had delivered over 100 million downloads to its gaming partners only three months after the launch of its game distribution platform. The report also championed Tencent’s WeChat app, which teamed up with device maker Xiaomi to launch a new smartphone aimed at its users, with 150,000 devices sold in under 10 minutes through a messaging application.

There was also strong growth in the ‘Utilities and Productivity’ category, where apps such as Evernote and Quip help record a 150 percent growth in use year-over year, as smartphones and tablets increasingly become a crucial part of organising our everyday lives. There was also a strong performance from gaming apps, a sector Flurry feared would reach saturation levels during 2013, yet which posted a 66 percent year-over-year growth in use.

The report stated that by 11:59pm on 31 December, Flurry Analytics had tracked a record 4.7 billion app sessions in a single day, and recorded a total of 1.126 Trillion sessions for the whole of 2013 (working out at an average of 3 billion using session per day).

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