The Competitors You Don’t See: Why Internal Data Isn’t Enough

The average US smartphone user interacts with 18 different apps a day. But here’s the catch: 74% of sessions are followed by another app within 30 seconds. 

If you only track your own analytics, you’re missing most of this picture. Internal data tells you what happens inside your app — but not what your users were doing before they arrived, what they do after they leave, or what else is competing for their attention. 

The Attention Bottleneck 

Despite millions of apps in the marketplace, just six platforms — Facebook, TikTok, Safari, YouTube, Instagram, and Chrome — account for nearly half (49%) of all mobile time. Expand to the top 25 apps and you capture 69%. 

This concentration means you’re not only competing against your direct category rivals. You’re competing with everything else on the phone — particularly social media. Nearly one in four of all app sessions is followed by a jump into social media. 

Where Internal Data Falls Short 

It’s natural to think your competition is obvious — Monopoly Go! vs Roblox, or Disney+ vs Netflix. But the reality of user journeys tells a different story. For example, our data shows that news apps are particularly susceptible to social media — around 1 in 4 news-app sessions (23%) switch to social media within 30 seconds of closing the app.

Even when you spot changes in your own analytics, you can't always see the cause. A fitness app might notice evening engagement slipping, without realising it lines up with the release of a hit new show on a streaming platform.

The AI Disruption Case Study 

2025 made this blind spot crystal clear: AI apps exploded. The ChatGPT app doubled its user base and increased time spent ninefold in just six months. Internal dashboards couldn’t flag that as a competitive risk until it was already reshaping behaviour. 

AI apps don’t just create a new category — they cut across many. They change how people search, how they spend downtime, and even how they make decisions inside other apps. If you weren’t looking at the bigger ecosystem, you’d have missed the shift until it hit you. 

Making Competitive Intelligence Actionable 

Competitive intelligence helps turn blind spots into strategy. It can reveal: 

• Market shifts before they hit you — spotting category-disrupting growth, like AI apps, months in advance. 

• User journeys — understanding what apps your users combine with yours, and where they go next. 

• Relative performance — because “20% growth” means little if your competitors grew 50%. 

Closing 

Internal data will always matter. But without external benchmarks, it’s only part of the story. To make smarter product, marketing, and investment decisions, you need to understand the digital world your app actually lives in. 

Do you have the data you need to see beyond your own walls?

Source: July 2025. MFour data.