Facebook rules Canadians’ smartphones, according to a new study that analyzed how people spend their time on mobile.
Flurry, a mobile analytics firm owned by Yahoo, analyzed activity across 92,000 devices in March 2015. It found Canadians spend the most time on messaging and social apps, with Facebook leading the way at 22% of total time.
In addition, Canadians spend 16% of their time in music, media and entertainment, which is twice the amount of time Americans spend in those apps (based on 2014 U.S. data). In the U.S., games command 32% of total time spent on mobile, compared to just 14% in Canada.
Despite the differences, both Canadians and Americans are in sync in their love for apps, according to Flurry, with 86% of time spent on mobile devices in apps and 14% in browser.
“Canada is now an app nation and in mobile we have an app economy and not a browser economy,” said Claude Galipeau, country manager at Yahoo Canada. “We see a pivot change in usage and marketers need to pay attention to where consumers are, which is in app.”
The study also looked at total session activity (how many times a person opens an app), finding in Canada, it grew 26% from March 2014 to March 2015. In terms of areas of growth, sessions in health and fitness apps increased 140%. This was followed by sports (88%), utilities and productivity (88%), finance (67%), messaging/social (32%), travel (29%), and music, media and entertainment (23%).
Games had zero growth in Canada, while lifestyle and retail apps were down 3%. With lifestyle apps, “it could be that we’re at the end of that adoption curve and people are using them less and they’re using new apps in health and fitness,” said Galipeau. And with retail apps, Galipeau noted other industry reports suggested ecommerce is lagging in Canada, which could be a contributing factor.
The study also found Canadians are beginning to adopt phablets (super-sized smartphones), with current adoption at 14% compared to 20% globally. According to the report, it wouldn’t be surprising to see phablet adoption continue to rise in Canada, given the significant amount of time Canadians already spend in music, media and entertainment apps, along with the growth of session activity in sports apps.
