Mobile App Usage is Highly Concentrated

The chances any single mobile app will get traction, becoming one of the 11 or 12 a smartphone user actually interacts with, are quite small, according to a new survey of about 7,000 consumers, conducted on behalf of Moosylvania,

In fact, just 10 of all the 100 apps male users say they interact with most have 46 percent of the usage. Just two apps have 27 percent share of all usage among the top-100 apps. The top-five apps have 39 percent of all the usage among the top-100 apps. It is terrifically difficult to break into the small circle of apps that even one percent of users, male or female, say they use regularly.

About half of consumers are using the mobile web as much as they’re using apps, so marketers should be very clear what they’re trying to achieve when deciding which approach to take, Moosylvania argues.

There is a clear Pareto distribution, commonly known as a "long tail," for apps. For male users, Google Maps is the most-used, by about 14 percent of male respondents. Facebook is second, at about 13 percent. App number ten, Yelp, is used by less than one percent of males.

Females, on the other hand, prefer Facebook quite a lot. Facebook is the top application used by 27 percent of female respondents. Google Maps is second at about seven percent. The 10th-most-used app by females, "calendar," is used by less than one percent of respondents.

The top-five mobile apps used by the female respondents represent 46 percent of all the top-100 apps females use. Just the top two apps represent 34 percent of all app use by females surveyed.

That highly-concentrated profile, plus the fact that 44 percent of all app users indicate that all or nearly all of their apps were free, suggests how difficult the "mobile app business" really is, as a business opportunity for app developers.

The study suggests females are more likely to have more free apps than men. About 52 percent of women indicated all or nearly all of their apps were free, versus 38 percent of males surveyed.

Males average approximately 31 apps on their smartphones and actively use about 12 of them. On average, females have about 26 apps on their phones and actively use about 11 of them.

There are 300,000 apps available that can be found on the majority of platforms, and out of those, a handful of apps completely dominate, leaving 299,900 fighting for an audience of any size, the study suggests.

You can see the full results at http://tracker.moosylvania.com.