In the past two years, media consumption by means of mobile apps has nearly tripled in the United States. At the end of 2014, an average U.S. user spent 46 minutes a day consuming media in mobile apps. At the end of 2015 that number had doubled to 96 minutes and it has risen another 38.5% to 133 minutes in 2016.
The data were reported Monday by Flurry, a Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) company. The researchers point out that the time spent consuming media is “over and above” all the time mobile users already spend on messaging, email, and the variety of other things.
Interestingly, the 2+ hours mobile users spend consuming media is more than double the average U.S. one-way commuting time of 25.4 minutes. And most of that commuting time is a single person in a car.
According to the Census Bureau’s 2013 American Community Survey, 76% of U.S. workers commute to work alone. One hopes none of that time is spent consuming media on a smartphone.
According to Flurry, the doubling of media consumption in 2015 was driven by entertainment apps from Netflix, YouTube and Hulu along with social media apps like Facebook or Snapchat. In 2016 more media consumption on social apps was the growth driver.
Flurry research also revealed that the generation that was just five or six years old when the iPhone was introduced nearly 10 years ago now account for the largest population spending time on their mobile devices. This group is one of the main growth drivers of media consumption in what Flurry calls “communitainment,” or communication for the sole purpose of entertainment.
Live streaming on mobile apps is happening now and it is growing, according to Flurry, which says:
[T]his trend is here to stay, and we see large communities forming around streamed content and hours based on it. This is reality TV pushed to its limits and it’s imperative for app developers to build and watch the space – no pun intended.
Get more information from the Flurry report.
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