A recent study from Nielsen reports that Android users spend 38 minutes per day using mobile applications and only 18 minutes surfing the mobile web. This means that users spend about twice as much time interacting with apps in comparison to their mobile phone's Internet browser.
Why? Well, it's certainly much easier for businesses to turn a profit on a mobile app in comparison to a mobile web site. The consumer has been trained to accept that a good mobile application probably will come with a price tag, whether that price tag is presented at point of purchase or during the in-app experience. This potential for increased profit incentivizes companies to create truly outstanding and compelling mobile applications, which in turn drives consumers to rely on applications for their Internet needs.
What is more interesting, is that the top 10 most downloaded apps account for, on average, 43% of the time a user spends interacting with mobile applications. Users spend 61% of their time using the top 50 applications. Even though there are over 250,000 apps in the Android market, consumers are still infatuated with .02% of total applications.
The Apple market is still leading this field with more than 450,000 applications available for download. No word on the usage breakdown between mobile web and applications, but if this Android data is any indicator, users are probably leaning towards apps as well.
The numbers are clear, it's time to get in the mobile app game if you haven't already.
Read the original report here.