In the latest of RealityMine’s Consumer Insights series, we look at smartphone usage in 2013 and assess usage of the most commonly used apps.*
What becomes glaringly obvious when reviewing the stats in this way is the sheer dominance that Facebook has in terms of smartphone face-time. Every single month without fail, Facebook had the highest usage in terms of face-time duration and number of launches across all apps, ending the year with 50% of all app use in December. To add to this, it was also the most commonly recorded search phrase in mobile browsers, showing that users were somewhat split between using the native app or accessing Facebook via a browser.
Facebook’s largest rival, Twitter, showed definite signs of growth throughout the year. Twitter didn’t even appear in the top four most used apps during January and February, but it then continuously held the fourth spot for five straight months from March to July, before creeping up to third place in August. Following a slight dip, Twitter finished the year in third place across November and December, and actually had a 19% share of total app use in the final month of the year, up from 8% in March.
In terms of communication, Messaging dominated, holding off Gmail as the preferred method of communication. With so many contracts offering unlimited SMS, only the cost of sending MMS messages stops Messaging apps from blowing away Gmail and WhatsApp completely.
The most popular web searches across 2013 uncovered some interesting highlights. Miley Cyrus was the most popular pop culture search phrase, with Amazon and Walmart being the most searched for retailers. Pizza Hut just edged the number of searches from Papa John’s in our passively tracked web data.
2013 was the year of the Harlem Shake, and the Ninja Turtles’ Harlem Shake recorded the most searches across our panels. A final warning for gamers: it seems a lot of people used search engines to cheat on Words with Friends which brings the ethos of friendship into question…
*Analysis based on research carried out amongst 8,677 panellists from around the world, between January 1st and 19th December 2013. RealityMine used mobile passive behaviour tools to monitor participants’ usage.
