The number of Android and iOS users has more than doubled in the past year, the proportion of time users spend on apps compared to the web has increased and so has the average number of apps per device.

These findings come from a report compiled by Nielsen for the Appnation conference that is currently underway in New York. It compares the state of the app and smartphone market in the US with roughly the same time last year.

Fewer than 40% of mobile subscribers in the US had Smartphone a year ago, now the proportion is over 50%.

There has been an even bigger jump in the number of iOS and Android users - going from 38 million to 84 million - and on average they have 41 apps per device, up 28% from last year's figure of 32.

There has been a 10% increase on the time spent on apps compared to the time spent on the mobile web - now mobile users spilt their time 81% to apps, 19% to the web compared to 73%, 27% last year. However, the actual time spent on apps per day hasn't changed much - it is now 39 minutes, an increase of just 2 minutes per day.

There has been speculation that the day of the app might be drawing to a close with the rise of HTML5 "apps". A number of magazines have abandoned their device specific apps in favour of a single HTML5 page that offers the same facilities but works on all platforms without any effort. So far the statistics don't detect any such move away from an app-oriented world. Until pure HTML adds standard ways to access native hardware this seems to be the way things will stay and native apps and HTML5 apps will each have their own niches in the mobile world.

More Information

Nielsen - State of the Appnation

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