According to
data released yesterday by Experian Marketing Services, US adults on average spend roughly an hour a day (58 minutes) on their smartphones. By comparison, according to data from InMobi, they spend 108 minutes per day using mobile media. It’s not clear whether the latter figure also includes tablets.
According to the Experian data, the top smartphone activities (percentage of time spent) are the following:
Talking — 26 percent
Texting — 20 percent
Social networking — 16 percent
Web browsing — 14 percent
Email — 9 percent
Games — 8 percent
Other — 9 percent
Take all these numbers with the proverbial grain of salt. There are other competing data in the market that show a different distribution of mobile activity. For example, a study by IDC (sponsored by Facebook) showed email to be the top mobile activity. Other studies have shown search to be the top smartphone activity. Much depends on how questions are framed and the size of samples being surveyed.
In terms of the reach or number of smartphone owners who engaged in the activity, Experian found the following:
Talking — 79 percent
Texting — 76 percent
Web browsing — 62 percent
Email — 61 percent
Social networking — 52 percent
In something of a surprise, Experian says only 2.3 percent of smartphone owners watch video on a typical day. By contrast, a 2011 study sponsored by Google found that 48 percent of smartphone owners watched video on their phones (although frequency wasn’t identified).
Experian also found “clear differences” between iPhone and Android users (see graphic above). For example, iPhone owners talk less and text more than Android owners. Android owners spend more time on the mobile Web than iPhone owners. And, iPhone owners email and use social networking more than Android owners.
Again, none of these data should be taken as more than simply “directional.” The takeaways are that people spend significant amounts of time with their smartphones and engage in a diverse range of activities on their devices.
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