Tag: smartphone use

Mobile trends in Canada have doubled consumer online time

Research has shown that people are on the internet a great deal more due to their smartphones and tablets.

Canadians are becoming increasingly hooked on their smartphones and tablets, and are streaming video on a more regular basis, and these mobile trends are causing the amount of time spent online to nearly double.

This is according to some of the most recent data that has been released by comScore.

Since August, there were around 27.8 million Canadian adults who were using a computer of some form to access the internet. The average amount of time spent browsing the web every month over a laptop or desktop computer was close to 39 hours per month. However, when mobile trends are taken into consideration, the use of those smaller stream devices, combined with viewing video online spikes the amount of time spent online to almost 75 hours per month. This is the equivalent to approximately 2.5 hours every day.

comScore has found that there has been tremendous growth as a result of video and mobile trends.

Mobile Trends - CanadaAccording to Bryan Segal, the vice president of sales at comScore, “We’re seeing extremely large growth.” He added that “It really points to the fact of how much impact – in terms of engagement and time spent – that mobile is having on what we traditionally looked at as a PC world.”

He pointed out that Canadians between the ages of 25 and 34 years old were found to be the ones who spent the largest amount of time online. The average time spent on the internet for people within that age group was about 110 hours per month. This included time spent online on all of their connected devices. That said, of those hours, only about 50 of them were actually spent browsing the web on a computer.

In the age group of 55 years and up saw different mobile trends. comScore found that Canadians were spending only about 20 hours online per month on mobile devices or streaming video on any type of connected gadget or computer. The majority of online usage from that age group was dedicated to browsing the web through the use of a computer.

Are mobile devices talking the talk anymore? Not really!

A recent study has shown that smartphone users are far more likely to text than make and receive calls.

Mobile Commerce Press has conducted a study that has revealed that when it comes to the use of mobile devices for communication, people aren’t using their smartphones to talk anymore, but are much more likely to send and receive text messages.

The smartphone usage trend study was conducted with the participation of North American smartphone owners.

The survey held by Mobile Commerce Press about communication using mobile devices showed that the vast majority of people are using texting far more than calls in order to reach friends and family. When asked “What percentage do you use your phone for texting vs. talking?”, the responses were as follows:

• 50 percent of the respondents said that they text 80 percent of the time and talk for the remaining 20 percent.
• 22.9 percent of participants said that they talked and texted about the same amount.
• 12.9 percent of the people who voted in the survey said that they couldn’t remember the last time they actually talked on their mobile devices.
• 11.4 percent said that they talked 80 percent of the time and texted 20 percent of the time.
• 1.4 percent, each, said that they used their cell phones exclusively for talk, or used the internet more than talking or texting.

While mobile devices do seem to be used for much more than just talking, this may not necessarily be good news.

Mobile Devices - TextingSocial and medical research studies are consistently saying that the increase in the use of smartphones for texting, surfing the web, checking email, tweeting, posting on Facebook, and taking pictures, as opposed to actually speaking with friends, family, and businesses, has its drawbacks. This body of evidence is continuing to grow and is suggesting that there are a number of social and communication disadvantages linked with a reduction in spoken communication instead of text based discussions.

There are a large number of benefits that are associated with talking with another person over a smartphone instead of sending a text. They include:

• Aside from dropping a quick line to which a response is not necessary, a verbal conversation is nearly always faster than one held over text, even among those who can type on a smartphone faster than the eye can see.
• Talking will almost always communicate a clearer message than texting. Ambiguity is considerably lower when tone of voice is taken into consideration.
• Chatting is far more personal and friendly than a texting, which is usually task-focused.
• Talking doesn’t require your eyes to have to stare at yet another screen.
• Conversations with depth. When you’re sending texts, you won’t receive half of the details and depth that you’d enjoy in a friendly chit-chat.

Of course, even with all of these advantages set aside, possibly one of the best advantages that talk has over text on mobile devices is the fact that auto-correct can keep its bizarre contributions to itself!