How App Engagement Varies Across Categories

While Nielsen research earlier this year suggested that there may be an upper limit to how many apps people use, the time people spend using apps continues to increase. New research from Localytics, an app analytics platform, shows that in August 2014 people spent 21% more time in apps than they did a year earlier. Music, health and social networking apps saw the largest increases with usage increasing 79%, 51% and 49%, respectively.

What's interesting is the fact that different types of apps see very different usage patterns. Social media apps for example are launched very often, but an average session only lasts 2.5 minutes. This "snacking behaviour", as Localytics calls it, could be a testament to the fear of many users to miss out on their friends' social media updates. Music apps on the other hand see the highest average session length, which also makes sense given the common usage of music apps during commutes or downtime.