Welcome to the Weekly HubFeed where we unpack this week's digital marketing news. Today, we're gonna be talking about a recent comScore study on smartphone app usage. I'm Chad Hill and I'm joined by Adam Stetzer.
Also available on YouTube.
Yeah, good morning, Chad. Last week, we were talking about this Hitwise study that indicated that almost 60% of U.S. searches are conducted via mobile. And as you said, Chad, this week, we're diving into yet another study, this one from comScore. They are revealing that 68% of the time U.S. consumers spend online is via mobile. Most of that mobile time is via smartphone so there's been just a huge explosion in smartphone adoption. And the bulk of that mobile consumption is via apps within the smartphone.
So this gets really interesting, Chad. Because it's concentrated very, very heavily on three top apps and this number will just blow your mind. 80% of the time in the smartphones in apps is spent in either Facebook, YouTube, or Facebook Messenger. So, you know, most of the time, it's either Facebook or a Google product.
So, you know, just to help unpack these numbers a little bit, total time spent consuming digital media, we see the break down between smartphone, desktop, and tablet going like this. Fifty-seven percent is smartphone, desktop is 32%, and tablet is 11%. And so that smartphone is really in the lead when it comes to consuming digital media. And that further breaks down. Of the smartphone usage, 50% of that is in apps and 7% of that is on the web. So again, the apps are dominant and the smartphone is dominant when it comes to digital media.
So how many people in the U.S. have smartphones? Well according to Pew, it's up to 68% of U.S. adults that actually own a smartphone. Sixty-six percent of adults have at least two devices, a smartphone and either a desktop or a laptop. And 36% own all three, which is also growing as twice as many has had all three in 2012.
Yeah, Adam, this stuff really is amazing. Pew research, of course, indicates that the more devices that people own, the more they go online. So really the news that we're seeing from comScore isn't shocking. Your phone is with you more than your desktop or your tablet. You know when you need information, you reach for your smartphone. And whether it's checking email, the weather, or your Twitter feed, you can use an app on your smartphone. And smartphone networks are faster, so that means you can consume more and they're not clunky. And, of course now, screens on all of the smartphone devices are much larger which allow you to do more things. And, you know, handle tasks that normally you would have gone back to your desktop for.
So the question is, does that mean that desktops and tablets are going away? And the answer is no. That basically the share...that if you put together the share of how much time people are on desktop and tablet together that smartphones aren't... They're expected to increase and have already overtaken desktop and tablet usage. And there's definitely no doubt that consumers will use mobile more and more in their purchase decisions. And that we know that consumers use their devices for different purposes. And that multiple devices are still used, and we covered this last week, through the purchase decision. So people may start research on a mobile device and then handle the transaction on their desktop. So every business seems to kind of understand that. Then that leaves us to, you know, the final point here is what should small businesses do with this information that comScore has put out?
And again, it's very similar to what we talked about last week. You can't ignore mobile or desktop. They're now more joined at the hip than ever. You can't do the same thing across all platforms. People are looking for different kinds of information on different platforms. So really studying your analytics is important to understand, are they location information? Is that primarily being visited by on mobile devices and it's maybe detailed product information more on your desktop? Is the shopping page on your website perhaps being hit by desktop computers? So understand that and then start to think about how you build your website and build your presence online. So that you're able to provide the information people are looking for on the right screen, the right size, when they need it.
So thank you again for joining us today. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Leave us a comment on our blog and we look forward to talking with you next week.
