By Barry Eitel
SAN FRANCISCO
Overall app usage grew 76 percent in 2014 as shopping apps increased a healthy 174 percent from the previous year, according to a report released Tuesday by the Yahoo-owned analytics firm Flurry.
“Every app store category has again seen session growth in 2014,” wrote Simon Khalaf, Flurry’s president and CEO, in a blog post.
According to Flurry, app usage is when a user opens an app and records a session – meaning that the user has to engage with an app for some time.
Khalaf noted that the key drivers of the growth were shopping, utilities and productivity and messaging which all saw triple-digit growth, showing that mobile users are getting serious with their devices. On Android devices alone, shopping app usage increased a massive 220 percent.
Target has called mobile “the new front door,” and other retailing giants like Amazon and Walmart have thrust massive campaigns into the mobile sphere. However, many smaller e-commerce efforts also launched in 2014, such as Threadless and Curbside, illustrating the diversity of the sector.
Flurry cites Microsoft as a significant propellant for productivity apps that saw a 121 percent increase in usage in 2014.
Microsoft released a mobile version of its quintessential Office productivity suite for not just Windows phones, but Apple and Android devices as well.
Compared to 2013, growth slowed drastically for games, music, entertainment and other media apps, although all those categories grew by at least 30 percent.
During 2014, “Flurry Analytics tracked 2.079 trillion sessions—a mind-boggling number,” Khalaf noted, adding that on the last day of the year the firm “set another daily session record with 8.5 billion sessions as people celebrated the approaching New Year chatting, sharing, looking for rides, and navigating New Year’s Eve.”
Flurry made headlines in 2104 because it was acquired by Yahoo in July.
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