Mobile Apps Hit Critical Mass

Even though Google just hit an astounding benchmark of one billion monthly unique users, a milestone the search giant passed in May, another tipping point in the US is worth noting: consumers are now spending more time on mobile apps than on the web.

Underlying this behavioral shift to mobile is a platform shift, as the number of smartphones and tablets shipped in 2011 exceeded those of desktops and notebooks.

It's also a testament to the rising dominance of an entire generation of digital natives attached to their smartphones, who expect instant, on-the-go and ubiquitous connectivity to their apps and friends.

The trend is even more dramatic when put in perspective; it took less than three years for native mobile apps to achieve critical mass, primarily because of Apple's iOS and Google's Android platforms.

Flurry crunches US mobile data from comScore and Alexa (and takes into consideration Kleiner Perkins' recent report) to conclude that, in the past year, American consumers spent an average of 81 minutes daily using mobile apps, as compared to 74 minutes daily on the web.

According to Flurry's analysis, the average US user in the 12 months through June 2011 spent 9% more time on mobile apps than the Internet, a change in one year from under 43 minutes daily on mobile apps versus an average 64 minutes online.

Games and social networking accounted for 79% of consumers’ total app usage. Facebook, not surprisingly, dominates that social activity, as the site has (in Flurry's words) “increasingly taken its share of time spent on the Internet, now making up 14 of the 74 minutes spent per day by consumers, or about one sixth of all Internet minutes.”

As mobile apps continue to proliferate in an untethered future, the only thing that seems certain is that Facebook, Google and Apple will all continue to jockey for bigger pieces of the connectivity pie that is consumer engagement.