Today has shared the monthly report on both smartphone and app marketshare. The data released today reflects the three-month average ending in December of 2015. The report breaks down the top smartphone platforms, manufacturers, and perhaps most interestingly, the most popular apps…

Facebook remains the most used app on smartphones, reaching 76.8% of all smartphone users that are 18 or older. Facebook Messenger comes in second place with 62.5%, while apps from Google round out the top 7.

Apple Music, which accounts for anyone that uses the Music app on iOS, even if they don’t use the streaming aspect, achieved 32.2% reach during this time. Apple Maps came in slightly lower at 29.1%, compared to the 50.9% of Google Maps. The extra reach of Google Maps, however, is likely due to the fact that the app is available on both iOS and Android.

One interesting thing to note, however, is that these reach percentages only account for smartphone users 18 years or older. This restriction likely skews data somewhat. For instance, Snapchat does not make the list of the top 15 most used apps, despite it being one of the most popular and fastest growing apps among teenagers. Likewise, Twitter comes in 15th place in this ranking, but would likely place higher if the data accounted for users under the age 18.

Apple still holds the title as the top smartphone manufacturer this time around, although it did slip slightly. The report shows that Apple holds 42.9% of the market, a 0.7% change compared to the previous month’s report.

On the Android side, Samsung, LG and Motorola all saw minor increases of 0.8%, 0.5%, and 0.5%, respectively. It’s worth noting that the data released from  last month also saw Apple decline by 1%, making it back-to-back months of decline for the company. Nevertheless, it still leads overall.

In terms of the top smartphone platforms, Android still holds the lead with 53.3% of the market, an increase of 1%. Apple’s iOS accounts for 42.9%. Again, that’s a 0.7% decrease compared to last month.

With arguments of “peak iPhone” floating around, these numbers are somewhat interesting, but in the long run, minor marketshare fluctuations are nothing to worry too much about.

http://9to5mac.com/2016/02/04/most-popular-smartphone-apps/

With the steady rise of mobile search, SEO practitioners these days need to consider how to optimize both their websites and apps for mobile search visibility.

Google’s mobile-friendly algorithm update, released in April 2015, gave a boost in mobile search results to pages with good mobile user experiences. Along those lines, Google has sought to increase the visibility of app content within mobile search results through app indexing. Thus, it’s key to have a strategic approach to our mobile optimization efforts — both on our websites and apps.

The now more mature mobile web and app optimization tools make this analysis possible, and straightforward, too.

1. Which Are Your Industry’s Top Mobile Web & App Competitors?
Let’s start with the fundamentals by identifying your competitors in mobile web and app search visibility. Are your competitors the same for both mobile web and apps? Are they the same as your desktop search competitors?

2. How Does Your Overall Mobile Traffic Performance Compare With That Of Your Competitors?
A question that arises frequently at the beginning of a mobile optimization process is, “What type of traffic can be expected from the optimized mobile presence?”

Although there’s no completely accurate way to answer (as it depends a number of factors such as your own efforts, your competitors’ activities, audience trends, industry seasonality, search platforms, algorithm updates and so on). That should give you an idea of what is achievable if you maximize the visibility of all your channels:

Mobile Web Traffic Potential
You can do something similar with your mobile app competitors and look at installs, active users and sessions. This data can also provide a reference to take into consideration:

Downloads Estimation App

For apps specifically, it’s good to look at traffic from within app stores, as well. SimilarWeb lets you see this information not only for in-store search, but also for all in-store related traffic.

3. What Are Your Current Mobile Web & App Search Rankings Versus Your Competitors’?
Once you have identified your competitors and their overall performance, you can dig deeper and analyze rankings. Look not only at your own mobile search rankings and trends, but at those of your competitors, too.

Mobile App Keywords

Besides in-store rankings and keywords, it’s also possible to obtain external search queries from search engines referring traffic to your mobile app (and your competitors).This will give you a much better understanding of the keywords generating visibility to your app presence and how your competitors are leveraging it already:

Mobile App In-Store & External Search Keywords

Now is also a good time to identify queries for which your competitors are ranking higher than you in mobile web search results and for which they have lost their rankings. You should strengthen your presence for these queries, and in cases where they have lost rankings, take the opportunity to fill the rankings gap.

4. How Does Your Mobile Search Visibility Differ From Your Desktop Search Visibility?
Take the keywords that you have identified in the mobile search analysis above and compare them with the top ones that you have been prioritizing in your SEO efforts until now. Are they different or the same? Use your current organic search traffic engagement and conversion metrics to prioritize keywords that will likely bring you greater benefits.

5. Which Of Your Best-Performing And High-Priority Pages Are Still Not Mobile-Ready Or Mobile-Optimized?
Once you have the keywords that you should target for your mobile optimization efforts, identify which pages you should be optimizing for them, and determine whether or not they are already mobile-friendly.

You can automate this by aggregating the relevant or already ranking URLs for the keywords you want to target and importing them into URL Profiler. From here, you can easily verify if they pass Google’s “Mobile Friendly” validation and their “Mobile PageSpeed” score by integrating with Google’s API.

6. Which Of Your Competitors Are App Indexing, And How Significant Is The Impact? For Which Of These Queries Are You App Indexing, Too?
Besides prioritizing those queries for which you have identified there’s a high interest in both mobile app and web search, you should also take into consideration the ones that your competitors are already targeting and benefiting from.

http://searchengineland.com/discovering-opportunities-drive-mobile-web-app-optimization-strategy-237625

Apple device owners spent more than $20 billion in the App Store in 2015. Apple users broke App Store records by spending more than $1.1 billion on apps and in-app purchases this holiday season.

That figure includes money spent during the two week period ending on Jan. 3. New Year’s Day was the biggest day in App Store history, with more than $144 million spent in the 24-hour period.

Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president who now leads the App Store, said that Apple device users spent more than $20 billion in the App Store throughout all of 2015. That’s double the 2013 figure.

Apple is now busy expanding the App Store to new platforms, like the Apple TV. The early crop of Apple TV apps already provide some insight as to how apps behave differently on the TV versus the phone.

http://time.com/4169153/apple-app-store-stats-2015/

With apps losing their novelty and e-commerce firms revisiting their mobile web strategies, Google has emerged as the winner retaining its dominance of online ad. Apps as e-commerce companies told anyone who cared to listen, were the future. Many put their money where their mouths were, altogether withdrawing from the mobile web.

Now, as apps lose their novelty, and as smartphone users uninstall apps to clear up memory, these companies are revisiting their mobile web strategies. Start-ups across the board, especially those that had moved unevenly towards the app, are scrambling to improve their mobile web offerings.

Earlier this year, companies had reduced resources and efforts towards mobile web, and the app-only strategy was taking centre-stage. But increasingly, we are seeing re-prioritization of mobile web and companies are giving equal attention to mobile web again.

Nobody is saying apps aren’t important. But it has become crucial for start-ups to have functional and well-designed mobile websites or web apps.

Few predicted this shift, which wasn’t even on the radar of many start-ups a few months ago. The mobile web never died, and for those who moved to app-only…it was a faulty decision in the first place. For service providers like us, it is never an either/or choice. Slowly you are seeing a lot of innovation happen on the web; for instance, there are app-like features now available on the web.

India is expected to have close to 400 million mobile Internet users by June 2016, according to a report released in November by the Internet and Mobile Association of India and market research firm IMRB International.

A majority of these users will access the Internet only through their smartphones. With the growing popularity of mobile apps, which many say offer a superior customer experience than conventional websi-tes, start-ups shifted their pro-duct and business strategies towards the app at the expense of desktop and mobile websites.

During the funding boom of 2014-15, many investors regarded the number of app downloads as one of the indicators of a start-up’s performance. Entrepreneurs and marketing heads rushed to maximize app downloads. Soon, however, it was evident that they didn’t necessarily result in high growth.

Consequently, the focus moved to usage and customer engagement. In this scenario, many start-ups and their investors have accepted that their expectations of an app-only world haven’t materialized. There are several reasons for this. Many first-time Internet users, especially in smaller cities and towns, prefer using their mobile web browsers to shop and surf the Internet rather than download a multitude of apps on their low-cost smartphones that have limited storage.

Customers also tend to get rid of most of the apps they download because of the inconvenience of frequent app updates and the limited storage space on phones, studies have shown. Now, many start-ups are moving to building mobile web apps, which can potentially offer the convenience and superior experience of so-called native apps, but without their limitations.

A few business-to-business (B2B) start-ups are also increasing their focus on the web.

As long as you can offer an app-like experience, mobile web is better for customers and companies. Customers don’t have to keep downloading updates and they save on space. For companies, it’s cheaper to build a mobile app compared to a native app. The shift back to mobile web will also affect advertising and marketing spending.

Mobile web continues to be a way for consumers to engage with content. When it comes to monetization, it will continue on both. Still, there are people who believe that apps will eventually call the shots.In the mobile Internet world, it is an app war. And in an app war, you can’t win by betting on a mobile website.

http://www.livemint.com/Companies/LQEj72VEodIgrCscvSB07O/Startups-refocus-on-mobile-web-as-apponly-strategy-loses-f.html

Tech giants Apple and Google are the most valuable brands in the world. Apple’s iPhones and other gadgets are gaining attention of smartphone lovers, while Google’s mobile web is making several things easy for users. Today, the main objective of tech giants should be to offer simple and inexpensive Internet to users, but Apple’s focus on apps and Google’s focus on mobile web are making businesses grappling with online world.

Evan Ratliff, who runs an online publication The Atavist Magazine, said it becomes very difficult for him to make a balance between app and web. According to Ratliff, he had to continuously work on web and magazine’s app, which means double pressure. Ratliff, co-founder of the magazine, said it takes too much time to maintain the magazine’s website and update users via app. The pressure to do everything was the reason why The Atavist Magazine decided to shut its app and focus only on the web, Ratliff added.

“The decision was difficult because The Atavist’s app had a following, and it is hard to give up any audience once you have it. But in the end, the app’s limitations were too great”, according to Ratliff.

The tech giants are not only strengthening their business, but also considering overlap. Mountain View, California, headquartered Google is also selling apps, while Apple is also making money by advertising. Both the companies know that there is an overlap, but they are tied to the vision of their core products.

http://nycity.today/content/286397-businesses-squeezed-between-apps-and-mobile-web

It’s the marketing slogan that has become a maxim for daily life in the tech age: There’s an app for that.
Apps – short for application – are downloaded programs that have become a staple of smartphones and tablets, turning what were little more than novel gadgets into photo studios, portable offices, vast libraries and video game consoles.
And, despite a stereotype of technophobia, older adults are also starting to embrace them. A study released in April 2014 by survey group Nielson, said 51 percent of cellphone owners over age 55 have a smartphone. Another study released by the same firm in July 2014 said, on average, that age group was spending 21 hours a month across 22 apps.
Locally, more than a few residents have incorporated apps, from the whimsical to the practical, into their everyday lives.
Some people said one app that has been helpful from a productivity standpoint is Office Lens, a free app that is part of Microsoft’s suite of programs. The app allows someone to take a snapshot of posters, whiteboards or documents – even at an angle – and it will automatically straighten and crop them into usable images.
People used it several times at conferences and to snap a picture of programs from events he／she’s attended with his/her friends.

http://www.gvnews.com/news/apps-make-life-easier-and-more-fun/article_aeb88d12-5efe-11e5-9882-4b7ebbc08774.html

Mobile apps are taking over — but, really, are you surprised?

A new report from Flurry says people are spending more time in mobile apps than watching TV. In 2015, U.S. consumers spent 198 minutes in mobile apps per day compared to 168 minutes watching TV. That time in mobile apps is up from 139 minutes in 2014 and 126 minutes in 2013, and that doesn’t include time spent in mobile browsers.

The report also notes it’s difficult to quantify how much of that time spent on apps overlaps with time spent on TV, since lots of people use their phones while watching TV. And while apps are making headway, TV usage isn’t decreasing. while apps are making headway, TV usage isn’t decreasing.

Meanwhile, mobile users have been trained to pay for content, according to the report. Games have traditionally dominated the top-grossing charts of app stores.And with a growth in sales from in-app purchases, traditional media companies could “move its content to apps and stream it over-the-top, charge consumers for it through the App Stores, and still make money from ads,” the report concludes.

Flurry’s data comes at the cusp of the new Apple TV announcement. At Wednesday’s Apple event, CEO Tim Cook said the television experience has been static while mobile innovation has flourished. His response is a simple vision: “We believe the future of television is apps. In fact, this transition has already begun.” With the Apple TV’s new OS supporting apps and an App Store for third-party apps, users can stream content from Netflix as well as shop and play games.

With new features like these, one thing is clear: The future of television means more than just watching television.

http://mashable.com/2015/09/12/time-on-mobile-apps/#qQ.Eq8Sb0Pkj