Research has shown that the world spent nearly one trillion hours using smartphone apps last year and according to new data, this trend is still on the rise. App Annie, a business intelligent firm, has discovered that the amount of time had increased by 25 percent in the first quarter of 2017. On average, smartphone users were found to access more than 30 apps a month and each person had launched at least 10 apps per day. App Annie recently released its 2017 ‘Spotlight on Consumer App Usage' report where it analyzed 10 countries around the world: India, Brazil, China, South Korea, Germany, the US, France, the UK, Japan and Mexico. ‘This increase in total time is largely a result of an exploding global user base,' App Annie shared in the report. ‘However, user-level metrics, such as the number of apps used and the average time per user, are vital in understanding what lies behind the cumulative hours.' In all 10 of the countries, the average person was found to use over 30 apps every month. And, on average, between one-third and one-half of the apps on the handset were used over a month's time. ‘Apps have successfully worked their way into dozens of the tasks that we perform each month,' reads the report. ‘By and large, they prefer to manage their lives through apps. For many industries, apps are increasingly becoming a must-have.' But it was Brazil who was found to lead the pack with the number of apps launched per day – the South American country clocked in with 11. Utilities and Tools are the most commonly used kind of app, thanks to numerous pre-installed apps, such as Safari on iOS and Google on Android. And social networking, communication and other social apps followed behind. Although iPhone users were found to launch more apps than those with Android smartphones, it was found that Android users spend more time playing gaming apps. The next portion of the report investigated how much time people were spending with their beloved apps. ‘While time per user varied greatly between countries, it grew from 2015 to 2017 in every country analyzed, further proof of the growing dominance of apps,' App Annie explained. Users in the US averaged over two hours and 15 minutes per day, which is equivalent to over one month out of the year. However, it was South Korea, Brazil, Mexico and Japan that took the top slots in usage – these smartphone owners spent at least three hours a day. In Brazil and Mexico, over half of user time was contributed by the social and communication categories, while games contributed 25 percent of user time in South Korea and Japan.
