The amount of time an average American spends in front of a TV set totals two hours and 48 minutes a day, unchanged over the past nine months. In the same period, an average American spent two hours and 57 minutes a day using a personal mobile device. Mobile devices have overtaken TV as the screen of choice among Americans.

The information comes from a recent analysis by Flurry, a Yahoo company. Researchers also noted that the time spent in the top 25 mobile apps (as ranked by comScore) rose by just 1% and now accounts for 70 minutes of a mobile device user’s daily time spent on the device. Time spent in all other apps — what Flurry calls “torso & tail apps” — rose by 21% to 85 minutes. Flurry also said that time spent on the mobile Web — presumably the other 22 minutes — remained flat for the nine-month period.

Flurry also points out that this is not only a big deal for the mobile industry, but a big deal for the apps industry. Here is how the researchers put it:

[I]ndependent developers have survived attempts by large players to consolidate the ecosystem. In fact, it looks like they are thriving, if time spent is a good measure. Developers from 180 countries have added over 110,000 applications on the Flurry network in the past nine months, pushing the total number of applications on the Flurry network to 590,000 applications. With a hope, a few prayers, and some marketing dollars, it looks like these developers will continue their relentless effort to reach the more than 1.5 billion devices worldwide and earn a portion of consumers’ time.

So, while device sales may be dominated by Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Samsung Electronics, and Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) has a majority portion of the software platform market, apps developers can look forward to growing demand for their work as mobile users come up with more ways to spend more time with their mobile gadgets.

ALSO READ: Video Viewing on Mobile Devices Skyrockets

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