Tag: mobile apps

Canadian smartphone trends show owners using their devices for more purposes

| January 6, 2014

A recent survey has shown that people in Canada love their mobile devices.

According to the results that have been published from a recent Canadian smartphone trends survey, owners of these devices have been using them to do everything from checking the weather, completing their banking tasks, and even ringing in the New Year.

Almost half of the people in that country feel that virtual communication will replace interactions in person.

The survey was conducted online by Ipsos and it focused on Canadian mobile trends, as well as those from 26 other countries around the globe. It asked 19,000 respondents about the apps that they use the most frequently. When it came to the applications that were most often used in Canada, 47 percent said that they had weather forecasts at the very top of their usage list.

These Canadian smartphone trends didn’t come as much of a surprise to many people.

Canadian Smartphone Trends - Wheather appAs people in that country are often focused on discussing – or complaining about – the weather, and as the Christmas season saw a massive ice storm blanketing the center and eastern portion of the country, it is no mystery as to why many people would be looking to those applications the most frequently, particularly over the last little while.

At the opposite end of the scale, device users in Saudi Arabia used weather apps the least frequently, said the survey. Though people in Canada did prefer those applications, it was the people in South Africa who used them the most frequently, as 56 percent used them on a regular basis. The report also indicated that people with a higher income appear to use weather apps the most frequently.

Another poll, also performed by Ipsos, suggested that the U.S. is the largest downloader of gaming and music apps for both tablets and for smartphones. When it came to weather applications, they were third most used.

The Ipsos research also pointed out the Canadian smartphone trends in which 33 percent of device users in that country use their banking apps more than music, fitness, travel and news. Among the participants, 42 percent said that they didn’t use any of the apps within the 8 categories defined by the survey.

Mobile app downloads this holiday season shows slowing growth

| January 3, 2014

This year still had the largest figures to date, but the year over year increases are beginning to ease.

Over the holiday season, tablets and smartphones proved to be a highly popular gift, yet again, and it should therefore not come as a shock to anyone that the number of mobile app downloads broke another range of records in 2013.

This most recent gift giving season saw an increase of 91 percent in downloaded applications.

That rate was seen on Christmas day when compared to the average daily rate of mobile app downloads that was experienced for the rest of December up until that day. This data was reported in a recent publication by Flurry, a mobile measurements and analytics platform. That company examined the transfer of more than 400,000 applications in order to determine what recipients of new iOS and Android devices were doing with them after they were unwrapped as gifts from under the tree.

The research found that mobile app downloads also increased by 11 percent.

mobile app downloads That growth figure was recorded between the number of downloaded applications on Christmas day 2013 when compared to the same day in 2012. As much as the numbers are still increasing and continue to break records, they are also starting to slow in their growth. The reason is believed to be that fewer consumers are receiving their devices for the first time. Though some have just obtained their first devices, many have obtained their second, third, or even fourth ones.

Consumers who already have smartphones and who have now received tablets, or who are receiving replacement devices already know what apps they like and trust. There is less experimenting to try out different things for the first time.

Flurry’s report explained that “New device activations do still spike on Christmas, but that spike is waning compared to years past, and it comes on top of a much larger installed base. That means that when new devices are loaded with apps, the overall impact on app download volume is not as big.”

It also pointed out that the largest increases in device ownership and mobile app downloads are typically in countries where there is a less significant importance placed on Christmas or where it is not celebrated.