Android

Simplify Your App Analytics with Custom Dashboards

FlurryAdminDB — Mon, 22 Mar 2021 19:19:03 +0000

Simplify Your App Analytics with Custom Dashboards

By Daryl Burghardt, Design Director, Flurry Analytics

FlurryAdminDB Mon, 03/22/2021 - 12:19

2021-03-23

Tags

ios app development

Android

app dev

Product News

Like many Flurry users, our goal is to deliver useful and meaningful experiences in our product. Based upon customer feedback and research, we are pleased to announce the initial release of customizable dashboards where you can now collect and group your most-used and relevant metrics. This is a step toward a more personalized Flurry experience where you can reorder, resize, and share data most relevant to your business and app development needs.

Custom Dashboards for Both Desktop and Mobile

We are introducing the ability to add your favorite charts to Custom Dashboards for both our desktop and Android and iOS app experiences; you’ll be able to have your data your way, anywhere you might need it. If you haven’t tried the Flurry app yet, now might be a good time as you can easily take advantage of your most needed metrics right on your mobile device. Leveraging the power of the Flurry desktop experience, we have been striving to make the Flurry app experience straightforward and focused.

Easily Add Charts and New Custom Dashboards

Choose Your Favorites

Any chart that can be added as a favorite item will have a star icon available to easily save it to your Custom Dashboards. Once you select the star, you’ll see a series of options to give the chart being saved a meaningful name and an option to either create a new dashboard, or add to an existing Custom Dashboard. You can save charts to multiple dashboards to avoid navigating through different tabs and lists within Flurry.

Choose your most-used charts
Name your own dashboards
Give meaningful names to your own charts
Edit and remove items as needed

Define Your Own Flurry Experience

What Is Most Relevant to You?

Our goal is to make Custom Dashboards the starting point in Flurry Analytics, pre-populated with the most valuable metrics and reports for your app. You will find Custom Dashboards are now the top-most navigation item so you can easily begin adding your most-needed items as you see fit. You can give meaningful names to the various dashboard views and charts to better track and manage them your own way. You can also remove any custom items at any point should you no longer need them; the original charts will remain intact where you originally found them as Flurry default charts (e.g. “App Activity”) so you can always go back and add them again if they become relevant.

Refining the Overall Filter Experience

For the initial Custom Dashboards launch, we have incorporated read-only views for filters, but we plan to introduce the ability to directly edit applied filters and other chart settings. Charts saved to your dashboards can be opened in Flurry’s standard full screen mode where you can see all details and applied settings so you can investigate and adjust. Over the coming months, we’ll refine how charts in Custom Dashboards can be repurposed and refined. Even ad hoc queries via Flurry Explorer will become a part of your customizable favorites allowing even easier access to your most crucial data which we hope will ultimately save you time. We are also looking to rework the overall filter experience itself to make defining the data you see quicker and easier to apply.

We are excited to simplify the Flurry experience for you, so reach out to us at support@flurry.com if you have any comment, concerns, or other needs we might not have considered! We are here to make Flurry better.

Flurry 2021 State of Mobile

LisaMoshfegh — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 20:55:24 +0000

Flurry 2021 State of Mobile

By Lisa Moshfegh, Product Marketing | Estelle Laziuk, Flurry Analyst | Aman Bansal, Flurry Analyst

LisaMoshfegh Mon, 02/08/2021 - 12:55

2021-02-09

Tags

2020 was an unforgettable year. The global COVID-19 pandemic changed the way we live, learn and work. And as the world appeared to be in chaos, smartphones kept people connected, informed and entertained. For this year’s Flurry State of Mobile, we’ll review the most significant global trends related to smartphone adoption, mobile app category growth, and app usage behavior.

Flurry Analytics is used in over 1 million mobile applications, delivering insights from more than 1 billion smartphones worldwide. All data in this report represents global numbers, excluding China and Europe due to insufficient data. Let’s start with which countries are seeing the greatest growth in smartphone adoption.

In the chart above, we identified the countries with the largest year-over-year increases in new device activations. In other words, these are the countries driving the world’s smartphone growth. India, for example, experienced a 31% year-over-year increase. For a country of 1.3 billion people with smartphone penetration around 30%, this represents tens of millions of new smartphones flooding the market.

Globally, we’ve seen a 6% increase year-over-year in new smartphone activations. But as many countries in North and South America have experienced flat or even a slight decline year-over-year, the growth is clearly coming from countries in Asia and the Middle East.

Let’s next review year-over-year shifts in market share of the world’s largest smartphone manufacturers and see which companies are benefiting from this smartphone growth.

In the bar chart above we list the global smartphone market share of the world’s largest smartphone OEMs. The gray bars represent 2019 market share, and the blue bars represent 2020 market share. Samsung has a 13 percentage point lead over Apple, the world’s second largest OEM. And while Apple has made significant gains in international markets with more recently released lower cost devices, they still have a long way to go close the gap on Samsung’s commanding lead.

Together, Samsung and Apple make up over half of all smartphones in use around the world, leaving a large part of the market fragmented. Best poised to shake-up the Samsung-Apple global duopoly is one of several Chinese manufacturers. According to analyst reports, Huawei makes up 43% of China’s smartphone market, which would put them much closer to Apple in terms of global market share than our data illustrates. However, as Huawei has to contend with U.S. sanctions, Xiaomi, OPPO, or vivo could see an opportunity to gain share.

Next, let’s take a closer look at the Samsung-Apple split at the country level.

In the chart above, we breakout new device activations by country and by OEM, ranked by the countries with the highest Samsung share. The blue lines represent Samsung, the green is Apple, and then we’ve combined all other OEMs together as Others in gray. Once again, this shows Samsung’s dominance at the country level, in addition to the global level we showed in the first chart. However, it also shows how fierce competition is among other Android manufacturers in several key markets including India and Indonesia.

Knowing that Apple controls 19% of the world’s smartphone market, we can deduce that Google’s Android operating system controls the remaining 81%. Next, let’s see how the operating system split looks at the country level.

In the chart above, we list the ten largest markets in terms of total new smartphone devices sorted by share of Android smartphones. As you can see, the Android operating system dominates in many of the world’s largest markets. Even in the United States, arguably Apple’s most important market, Android holds a small lead. And in countries such as India and Indonesia, with large populations and relatively low smartphone penetration, the numbers really tilt in Android’s favor.

Any plans Apple has for international expansion in some of these key markets could be hampered by the premium prices of iPhone devices. For years, Apple ratched up the price of its most premium devices, with the highest-end models nearing $1,500. More recently, however, Apple released lower cost devices like the iPhone XR and iPhone SE likely as a means to find new audiences both in the U.S. and abroad.

Next look at what groups are driving mobile device and app usage.

In the chart above, we present the percent change in sessions per user from 2019 to 2020 by generation. Generations Z and Y, which collectively represent those from high school age to around 40 years old, increased their app usage the most, by 11% and 34% respectively. We believe that these young adults and young working professionals gained the most additional free time due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With school shifting to remote learning, work transitioning to the home, and heavily reduced social activities, these users increasingly turned to their smartphones to pass time. This aligns with an earlier report we published showing that Gen Z mobile gaming surged during the early months of the pandemic. Let’s now review which app categories saw the biggest increases year-over-year.

In this final chart, we show which app categories had the largest increase in sessions per user from 2019 to 2020. App categories that facilitate working and learning from home, such as Business and Productivity, saw the largest increases, up 85% and 29% respectively. Social apps allowed people to stay in touch when the pandemic prevented in-person gatherings, and of course, Food & Drink benefited from the unexpected interest in baking, as well as the surge in take-out orders. Even though the mobile gaming category only shows a 7% increase, a single digit percentage increase actually represents massive growth as gaming is already one of the most heavily used app categories in mobile.

On the other end of the spectrum, Travel and Shopping app categories suffered major declines year-over-year, likely due to the stay-at-home orders in place throughout much of the year due to COVID-19.

While 2020 was a year unlike any other, we don’t expect 2021 will bring much normalcy until the COVID-19 vaccine becomes available to all. As the world begins to re-open, we believe smartphone and app usage will trail behind as people have become even more connected to their mobile devices than before. Please make sure to follow us on the Flurry blog, Twitter and LinkedIn where we regularly report on smartphone adoption trends and shifts in user behavior.

iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.

Samsung and Samsung Galaxy are trademarks of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. in the United States or other countries.

The Flurry blog (https://www.flurry.com/blog/) is an independent blog and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. or Samsung.

The Top 5 Mobile App Trends of 2020

LisaMoshfegh — Tue, 01 Dec 2020 17:45:49 +0000

The Top 5 Mobile App Trends of 2020

By Lisa Moshfegh, Product Marketing

LisaMoshfegh Tue, 12/01/2020 - 09:45

2020-12-01

Tags

Mobile Insights

App Category Insights

Mobile Gaming

Mobile News Consumption

ios

Android

2020 has been a tumultuous year. A global pandemic claimed the lives of nearly 1.5 million people, a worldwide movement emerged for racial justice, and American political division created widespread concern. With COVID-19 forcing unprecedented social distancing, the mobile app economy has also experienced radical shifts. App consumption has exploded, Gen Z is gaming more than ever, and mobile news consumption dwarfed that of 2019. And Apple’s announcements of impending data policy rule changes have upended an ecosystem. In this report, we’ll revisit the biggest mobile app trends in 2020.

1. Society Ground to a Halt

As COVID-19 began to spread, non-essential business closed, schools transitioned to distance learning, and most recreational activities were paused or canceled. Governments issued stay-at-home orders to further limit the spread, which forced the most people to stay home. The transition to working from home and reduction in travel turned financial districts and airports into ghost towns. And with restaurants closed, many people chose to cook for themselves or order takeout. In fact, while usage of recipe and takeout apps increased during shelter-in-place, usage of restaurant apps declined by 36%. In addition, we analyzed traffic to both airport and financial districts across the United States to gain insights into people’s movement.

In the chart above, we show the percent change in daily mobile app users in U.S. financial districts beginning in March, when the pandemic went into full swing, comparing each month to baseline usage from January. We display this change in blue against the rising number of new coronavirus cases in gray. Starting in April, travel to financial districts plummeted by 60% compared to pre-coronavirus levels. Read the full report here on the dramatic decline of traffic to America’s largest financial districts.

2. App Category Booms and Busts

The onset of COVID-19 forced most Americans to shelter-in-place as non-essential businesses and schools closed. As people suddenly found themselves with more free time, many reached for mobile devices to help pass the time. And while aggregate app usage is up, usage across individual app categories varies wildly. Let’s check out the top movers.

In the chart above we show the percent change in monthly sessions compared to the January 2020 baseline for the top changing app categories. On the right, we rank app categories based on their app usage growth since the beginning of the year. A surge across Investment apps were the result of wildly volatile financial markets. And as gyms and yoga studios closed, Health & Fitness apps spiked by helping people maintain a workout regiment. On the other end, Sports and Food & Drink suffered double-digit declines as sporting events were cancelled and restaurants were forced to close. Read our full analysis of all app categories from January to July.

3. Mobile Gaming Exploded

As people spent unprecedented amounts of time at home, with limited recreational activities, mobile gaming filled the void. In an earlier report, we concluded that the quarantine created such an unusual surge in mobile gaming that every day was like Sunday. The typical weekend spikes were erased, and every day saw elevated usage. On average, mobile gaming sessions were up by 21% compared to the pre-coronavirus levels! Although much of this growth was driven by Gen Z who found themselves with minimal schooling and limited recreational activities, mobile gamers of all generations were gaming more.

In the chart above, we plot 2020 game sessions by user in dark blue. The light blue line represents 2019, to illustrate the increase in usage that occurred this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, mobile gamers averaged 17% more gaming sessions than in 2019. Considering that gaming is one of the largest app categories, even modest increases are remarkable.

4. Mobile News Consumption Soared

The first two months of 2020 began with a standoff with Iran, the impeachment trial of a sitting U.S. President, and the death of a basketball icon. Then COVID-19 began to spread, forcing governments to issue shelter-in-place orders that led to economic uncertainty. As the country attempted to recover from the initial COVID-19 wave, the death of an unarmed African American man at the hands of the Minneapolis police department triggered a global movement calling for racial equality. These headlines culminated with a tumultuous campaign for the United States Presidency that resulted in the most votes ever cast in a U.S. election. All of these stories led to massive spikes in mobile news consumption. Let’s take a look.

In the chart above, we chart daily mobile news app sessions in the U.S. for both 2019 and 2020. We show 2019 in light blue and 2020 in dark blue to demonstrate just how significant this year has been for mobile apps in the News category. You can read our earlier report covering mobile news consumption for the first half of 2020 here and our second report specifically highlighting the leadup to the U.S. Presidential election here.

5. Apps Reduced Ad Revenue Dependence

Many app developers’ bottom lines got hit with a double-whammy in 2020. First, the economic uncertainty due to COVID-19 caused many advertisers to reduce ad spending. And second, Apple announced at WWDC that iOS developers would have to gain permission from end users to share data with third parties, which is expected to reduce CPMs for iOS apps running ads. Although Google has yet to announce similar privacy measures, there is speculation that Android app developers could face a similar fate. Let’s review what changes app developers made to their business model in light of these two shifts.

In the chart above, we analyze the change in share of advertising-only revenue models compared to a January 2020 baseline to understand if app developers are in fact moving away from advertising-supported business models. We separate the two operating systems, with Android on the left and iOS on the right. Typically, Android apps rely more on advertising than iOS apps, largely due to Google simplifying the process of incorporating ads into mobile apps. Given this reliance on advertising as a source of monetization, Android developers were much more impacted by the reduction in ad spend due to COVID-19. However, the chart shows consistent recovery throughout the year as advertising spend slowly increased. iOS developers, on the other hand, were less impacted by the reduction in ad spend, but are still moving away from an advertising-only revenue model, likely because of the impending privacy changes Apple is expected to launch in early 2021. You can find our full report on shifting business models for app developers here.

Make sure you subscribe to the Flurry blog and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn for the latest reports on the mobile industry, including holiday forecasts and 2021 predictions.

The Flurry blog (https://www.flurry.com/blog/) is an independent blog and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc.

Smartphone Market Profile: Southeast Asia

LisaMoshfegh — Thu, 29 Oct 2020 16:21:05 +0000

Smartphone Market Profile: Southeast Asia

By Aman Bansal, Flurry Analyst

LisaMoshfegh Thu, 10/29/2020 - 09:21

2020-10-29

Tags

App Insights

Android

ios

With 8.5% of the world’s population, Southeast Asia is a culturally and ethnically diverse region and one of the fastest growing smartphone markets in the world. It’s made up of several countries, anchored by Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populated country. In this report, we’ll analyze the current smartphone landscape in Southeast Asia.

Flurry Analytics is used in over 1 million mobile applications worldwide, providing insights from 2 billion devices per month. Let’s begin by reviewing the distribution of mobile devices across Southeast Asia by country.

In the chart above, we list each country in Southeast Asia by its percentage of smartphone users. Indonesia accounts for 45% of all smartphone users in Southeast Asia and 40% of its total population, followed by the Philippines (16% of smartphone users, 16% of population), Thailand (12% of smartphone users, 10% of population) and Vietnam (11% of smartphone users, 14% of population).

As seen in the chart above, the Southeast Asia region saw a strong increase in device activations, growing 20% YoY. This was primarily driven by the larger markets such as Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand that continued to grow despite their huge existing user base. In the case of Indonesia, a 25% growth rate for a country of 274 million people is a significant shift. Among the reasons growth is so high across these countries is low existing smartphone penetration, which stands at 31%, 34%, and 40%, respectively. Their relative market sizes and growth rates provide lucrative opportunities for app developers to monetize and grow their own user bases. Singapore’s 28% decline in mobile device activations is likely due to their extremely high smartphone penetration rate of 90%. Based on our analysis, their device activations peaked in 2018 and have declined each year thereafter.

Next, let’s review the platform preference in Southeast Asia.

In the chart above, we list each country by its share of Android devices compared to iOS devices. Brunei, the least populated country in Southeast Asia, has the highest share of iOS devices at 65%. Indonesia, the most populated country in the region, has the highest share of Android devices at 96%. While the average Android share in Southeast Asia is 86%, it varies considerably amongst different countries. This wide variation speaks to the diversity within the region which app developers should keep in mind as they vie for success in these markets.

Next, let’s take a look at market share by smartphone manufacturers in Southeast Asia.

In the chart above, we list the top 5 smartphone manufacturers in Southeast Asia as of September 2020. We then combine the remaining manufacturers into “Others,” represented by the gray slice of the pie. Samsung is the clear leader controlling 34% of all smartphones in the Southeast Asian market, followed by OPPO at 18%, Apple at 14%, vivo at 13%, and Xiaomi at 8%. From 2019 to 2020, both Samsung and vivo gained market share, by 1 and 2 percentage points, respectively. Meanwhile, OPPO and Apple remained flat, while Xiaomi lost 1 percentage point.

Finally, let’s review the most popular device models in Southeast Asia.

In the chart above, we list the 10 most popular smartphone devices in Southeast Asia as of September 2020 by the number of active devices in the market. We list OPPO models in blue, Samsung models in orange, and vivo models in green. OPPO phones feature prominently as amongst the most popular smartphones in the region, taking 3 out of the top 5 spots, followed by Samsung phones taking 5 out of the top 10 spots, and vivo taking the remaining 2 spots. Notably missing from this list is Apple, which despite being the third largest OEM in the region, did not figure amongst the most popular devices.

Southeast Asia’s low smartphone penetration rate combined with a large population and high new device adoption rates make it an enticing market for both app developers and device manufacturers. We’ll continue to analyze smartphone markets around the world. Make sure you subscribe to the Flurry blog and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn for more country profiles and other market analyses.

Galaxy is a trademark of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. in the United States or other countries.

The Flurry blog (https://www.flurry.com/blog/) is an independent blog and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Samsung.

Are App Developers Shifting Revenue Models as Advertising Gets Challenged?

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 22:47:47 +0000

Are App Developers Shifting Revenue Models as Advertising Gets Challenged?

By Peter Farago, Flurry GM, and Aman Bansal, Flurry Analyst

Anonymous Thu, 08/13/2020 - 15:47

2020-08-13

Tags

Mobile Insights

Android

ios

App Category Insights

Since the App Store and Google Play launched over a decade ago, advertising has enabled app publishers to offer free, high quality applications. Even when users fail to explicitly pay an app publisher for the use of an app, the publisher can still earn revenue. With 76% of all apps generating revenue from advertising, according to a recent Ad Colony survey, the ad revenue model has been a cornerstone of app monetization—at least until this year.

In 2020, two events have started to impact advertising revenue. First, COVID-19 has driven a large drop in ad spending. eMarketer initially forecasted U.S. mobile ad spending to grow by more than 20% in 2020, but due to COVID-19 ad spending is now instead expected to decline by 10%. Second, at WWDC in June, Apple announced that app publishers will soon be required to gain end-user opt-in for sharing data, which will cause an even larger drop in ad revenue. This requirement goes into effect when iOS 14 launches in September. While the stated reason is user privacy, which Flurry supports, opt-in rates are expected to be so low that Apple’s IDFA, the key identifier used for advertising, will become largely unusable. Think of it as de facto deprecation. With the removal of this identifier from the ecosystem, the IAB estimates that publisher ad revenue will drop by another 52%.

For this study, Flurry looked at what revenue models app developers have been using in 2020 and whether those have been shifting over the course of the year. With ad revenue under siege, we wondered if app developers are showing signs of moving toward more paid models. Flurry Analytics, owned by Verizon Media, is used in over 1 million mobile applications, providing aggregated insights across more than 2 billion mobile devices per month. For this analysis, we identified 3,500 unique applications that use ad revenue, in-app purchase or a combination of both to monetize their applications. We limited the sample to include apps that have a minimum of 10,000 monthly active users. Let’s start by looking at which revenue models were used at the beginning of 2020, before the impact of COVID-19 began.

The side-by-side donut charts above show which revenue models were used by app developers at the beginning of this year for both iOS and Android. We grouped models by Ads only, In-app Purchase (IAP) only or using a combination of Ads & IAP. At a high level, app publishers use IAP more on iOS, and Ads more on Android. 38% of apps use IAP on iOS versus 28% on Android. Likewise, the number of apps that use a combination of IAP and Ads is slightly higher on iOS at 23%, versus 21% on Android. When it comes to monetizing only with advertising, 52% of apps do so on Android versus just 39% on iOS.

We next took a snapshot of revenue models in July and compared that to the January baseline established in the charts above. By then, COVID-19 had deeply impacted advertising spending, by as much as 30% according to eMarketer. Additionally, Apple had made its announcement regarding use of the IDFA in June. While the impact of this announcement might not have been fully understood yet, the news was out.

The chart above shows the percentage point change in revenue models used within applications from January 2020 to July 2020. On the left we show iOS, and on the right we show Android. The total changes within a platform balance out to zero between ‘Ads Only’ versus the sum of ‘Ads & IAP’ and ‘IAP Only.’ For example, on iOS, the percentage points of apps using Ads Only declined by 3%, while the sum of Ads & IAP and IAP Only increased by 3%. On Android, ‘Ads Only’ decreased by 6% where the sum of apps using IAP increased 6% (+2% Ads & IAP and +4% IAP only). What this chart tells us is that app developers are shifting away from using only advertising for monetization on both iOS and Android. To date, we believe the main driver is due to the drop in ad spending as a result of COVID-19. While Apple’s announcement may lead to a larger, longer-term impact to ad revenue viability, the effects are not yet fully understood or realized. It also makes sense that Android is seeing a larger drop in apps that use advertising only to earn revenue since Android is known to be the platform where ad revenue tends to perform better. Google, with its roots in advertising, has invested more in enabling ad revenue generation over transactions such as in-app purchases. Now that we’ve looked at the revenue model shift by platform over time, let’s drill down to see changes at the app category level.

The above chart compares the change in app categories using an advertising only revenue model for monetization between January 2020 and July 2020. In gray, we show the percent of apps within a category using advertising only, and in blue we show the percent of apps using advertising only as of July 2020. And we ranked the categories in descending order based on using advertising only to generate revenue. At the top of the chart, you’ll see that News & Magazines, Education and Business app categories use advertising to generate revenue more than other app categories. By contrast, at the bottom of the chart, you’ll see the categories that rely least on advertising exclusively for revenue. From the bottom up, those are Games, Photo & Video and Social. Note that apps in these categories may still use advertising as a main way of monetizing but that revenue is blended with other models. This chart shows apps that use advertising only, and no other revenue models. For example, around 35% of game apps use advertising only. The rest of game apps use a blend of Ads & IAP, or IAP exclusively.

As app developers face the prospect of declining ad revenue, and in particular from changes brought about by iOS 14, we expect there to be a shift toward paid models. In this future state, developers with a dependency on ad revenue may prioritize their Android apps over iOS, for as long as Android supports advertising. It still remains to be seen whether or when Google might follow Apple to enforce a similar opt-in tracking policy. We’ll continue to monitor which business models are employed by app developers as iOS 14 rolls out and beyond. For the latest mobile insights and to share those insights with others, please consider also following us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Samsung, The True Ruler of the Android Kingdom

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 05:58:53 +0000

Samsung, The True Ruler of the Android Kingdom

By Mary Ellen Gordon, PhD

Anonymous Tue, 03/31/2015 - 22:58

2013-08-20

Tags

App Insights

Samsung

Android

Android has been a hot topic lately, with some arguing that it may become a unilateral smartphone superpower and others arguing that it has already peaked in the US market. A lot of this conversation seems to assume that Android’s (and by extension, Google’s) gain is Apple’s loss and vice-versa. We believe that the situation is more complex than that.

Two facts about Android are now well established: 1) Android smartphones now dominate many markets in terms of device shipments, but 2) The market for Android devices is famously fragmented. What’s less well-established is how and when all of those Android devices are being used and the implications of that for participants in the Android ecosystem and beyond. Those are the topics that we tackle in this post with a particular focus on Samsung devices and how their owners compare to users of other Android devices.

This posts builds on a previous one we did exploring how people use iOS smartphones and tablets. As we will show, there are many similarities in usage patterns across the two operating systems, but one big difference is the overall breakdown between smartphones and tablets. In this May sample of 45,340 Android devices (of the 576 million Flurry measures), 88% were phones and 12% were tablets. The share of devices represented by smartphones is significantly greater than in our iOS sample, in which 72% of devices were phones. The emphasis on phones over tablets was even greater among Samsung devices in our sample: 91% were smartphones and 9% were tablets.

As in our previous post, we started our analysis by considering how the smartphone versus tablet distribution varies by psychographic segment. These are Personas, developed by Flurry, in which device users are assigned to segments based on their app usage. An individual person may be in more than one Persona because they over-index on a variety of types of apps. Those who own more than one device may not be assigned to the same Personas on all of their devices because their app usage patterns may not be the same across devices.

The Personas shown above the “Everyone” bar in the graph below skew more toward phones than the general population of Android device owners, while the Personas shown below the “Everyone” bar skew more toward tablets. (Android device ownership patterns for Personas not shown are not statistically different from those shown for “Everyone.”) In general, these follow a similar pattern to the one we saw for iOS. On-the-move type Personas, including Avid Runners, skew toward phones and more home-bound personas, such as Pet Owners, skew more toward tablets.

Within that broader pattern, there were differences based on the particular Android smartphone or tablet that a person owns. Samsung is the dominant manufacturer of Android devices. Its phones represented 59% of the phones in our overall sample of Android phones, and its tablets represented 42% of the tablets in our sample. Both its products and its promotion suggest that Samsung attempts to differentiate itself from other devices that share the Android operating system, and those differences were reflected in persona memberships.

Owners of Samsung devices were disproportionately likely to be in many personas, including some of those most sought-after by advertisers (e.g., Business Travelers and Moms). Since Persona memberships are based on over-indexing for time spent in particular types of apps, this suggests that Samsung device owners are generally more enthusiastic app users than owners of other brands of Android smartphones and tablets.

Overall, owners of Android tablets spent 64% more time using apps than owners of Android smartphones. This ratio varied by category, as shown in the chart below. For example, owners of Android smartphones spent more than five times as much time, on average, in Business apps as owners of Android tablets. Sports and Photography were other categories that heavily favored phones. As with iOS, Education and Games skewed more toward tablets. (Average time spent using app categories not shown does not differ in a statistically significant way between Android smartphones and tablets.)

Once again there was variation by manufacturer. Overall, owners of Samsung phones spent 14% more time using apps than owners of other Android phones and owners of Samsung tablets spent 10% more time using apps than owners of other Android tablets. The particular categories of apps where time spent was greater for Samsung phones were News Magazines, Tools, Health and Fitness, Photography, and Education. Owners of Samsung tablets spent more time than owners of other Android tablets in Communication (e.g., voice over IP and texting) apps.

Android app use peaks between 8 and 11 pm. Comparing the two types of Android devices, a greater share of tablet use takes place from 3pm until 11 pm and a greater share of phone use takes place from 11 am to 3 pm and overnight. While the overall amount of time spent on Samsung devices is greater than for other Android smartphones and tablets, the overall time distribution throughout the day is similar.

As this and our previous post have shown, while smartphones capture more time in specific app categories, such as Navigation and Photography, those tend to be categories of apps used in short bursts. Tablets are favored for longer-duration app categories, such as Games and Education, and so, on average, tablet users spend more total time using apps than smartphone users. That makes tablets particularly interesting to content creators and to advertisers.

Samsung is the dominant manufacturer of Android devices. As shown in this post, it is attracting a unique audience relative to other Android devices. Owners of Samsung devices spend more time in apps than owners of other Android devices, and they are also disproportionately likely to be members of psychographic segments (Personas) that are attractive to advertisers. In those respects, they are more similar to owners of iOS devices than owners of other Android devices are.

But compared to iOS, a smaller share of Android devices are tablets, and that percentage is even smaller for Samsung devices than for Android as a whole. So the question is: will Samsung make as big of an impact in the tablet market as it has in the smartphone market?

In some ways, this comes down to a question of how it will balance its resources between two different types of markets: relatively more affluent countries that were early adopters of connected devices so new growth is now coming mainly from tablet adoption versus less affluent countries where smartphone penetration is still relatively low, but growing quickly.

A focus on tablets could enable Samsung to better develop more of a true ecosystem of its own (especially considering that they can include connected TVs as part of that) and the higher profits that go with that. Riding the wave of global smartphone growth is more of a high volume / low margin strategy. Of course, they could try to compete at both ends of the market, but each individually may require a lot of resources because of Apple’s (and to a lesser extent, Amazon’s) strength in the tablet market and the number of hungry competitors anxious to grow along with the Android smartphone market. If they can do both, they will rule the Android Kingdom, and Samsung, rather than Google, will pose the greater threat to Apple.

Valentine's Day 2013: Looking for Love with Apps

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 23:45:26 +0000

Valentine's Day 2013: Looking for Love with Apps

By Mary Ellen Gordon, PhD

Anonymous Wed, 03/11/2015 - 16:45

2013-02-14

Tags

Android

App Insights

ios

Today as those in relationships rush to stores to pick up Valentine cards and gifts for their significant others, single women looking for relationships may want to pick up their smartphones. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Flurry explored user composition and behavior in a sample of smartphone dating apps. We found that in dating apps targeting both genders, there are typically almost twice as many active male users as active female users. For this analysis, we examined 20 top dating apps whose combined 17 million active users delivered more than 2.1 billion sessions in January 2013.

Women wishing to further stack the odds in their favor may wish to download an Android dating app. When we compared the user composition for a sample of dating apps available on both iOS and Android phones, we found that active users of Android dating apps skew even more male.

Young adults in search of a Valentine (or those in search of a young adult Valentine) also may want to download a dating app on an Android device. In looking at the sample of dating apps available on both iOS and Android, we found that adult users of Android dating apps are more likely to be under 25 than adult users of iOS dating apps.

The millions of people who use dating apps do so regularly. They typically open their dating apps eight times a week and use them for seventy-one seconds at a time. Users of dating apps for gay men are even more active. They typically use them twenty-two times a week for ninety-six seconds at a time.

iOS and Android Adoption Explodes Internationally

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 23:21:36 +0000

iOS and Android Adoption Explodes Internationally

By Peter Farago, VP Marketing

Anonymous Wed, 03/11/2015 - 16:21

2012-08-27

Tags

App Insights

Apple

Android

The rate of iOS and Android device adoption has surpassed that of any consumer technology in history. Compared to recent technologies, smart device adoption is being adopted 10X faster than that of the 80s PC revolution, 2X faster than that of 90s Internet Boom and 3X faster than that of recent social network adoption. Five years into the smart device growth curve, expansion of this new technology is rapidly expanding beyond early adopter markets such as such as North America and Western Europe, creating a true worldwide addressable market. Overall, Flurry estimates that there were over 640 million iOS and Android devices in use during the month of July 2012.

This report reveals which countries have the largest active smart device installed bases, are experiencing the fastest growth and are most penetrated. We also show how the distribution of app usage is shifting to become increasingly international. For this report, Flurry uses data from more than 200,000 applications that it tracks, running on more than 640 million devices worldwide. With its application coverage, Flurry estimates that it can reliably detect over 90% of all iOS and Android devices active in the world during a given month. Let’s start by looking at which countries make up the world’s largest app markets.

Compared to July 2011, the United States and China continue controlling the top two spots, with China dramatically closing the gap on the United States. Year-over-year, Flurry calculates that net active devices in the U.S. grew by approximately 30 million, while China saw more than 100 million new active devices enter the market. At this rate, China’s active installed base could overtake the United States as early as the 2012 Holiday season. Please note that Flurry detects actual active devices upon which apps are running, and that these numbers will differ than reported hardware sales by OEMs. Compared to last year, 9 of the top 10 countries remain unchanged, excepting Brazil, which pushes Australia just out of the top 10, into the 11^th position.

The chart above shows the growth in active devices per country between July 2011 and July 2012. China leads the world with an astounding 401% year-over-year growth, demonstrating the power of the country’s vast population coupled with its rapidly growing middle class. Notably, all four BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) are represented in the top 10-ten growth countries for smart devices, reinforcing their new stage of advanced economic development. For this chart, Flurry selected countries that had a minimum of a half a million active devices as of July 2011.

In addition to the fastest growing countries, Flurry also measured which markets are mostly rapidly nearing saturation. Specifically, we compared the number of active devices in each country relative to its adult population, between ages 15 and 64 years old. While Singapore, Hong Kong and Sweden form the top three countries in terms of smart device penetration, indicating their strong consumer technology economies, each country has a relatively small total population, ranging between 5 to 10 million. By comparison, the United States, the fifth most penetrated country with 78% of its adult population using smart devices, has a total population of more than 310 million. South Korea and the United Kingdom have the 2^nd and 3^rd largest populations among the top 10 penetrated markets, with roughly 50 million and 60 million respectively.

Finally, we look at look at the volume of application usage across the globe tracked by Flurry, which we estimate comprise of approximately one fifth of all worldwide app sessions on iOS and Android, the world’s largest cross-platform sample. Year-over-year app sessions in the U.S. declined as a proportion of WW sessions between July 2011 and July 2012, from roughly one-half to a little over one-third. The balance of the top 10 (ranks 2 -9) grew from 27% in July 2011 to 36% in July 2012. The rest of the world also made gains from 21% in 2011 to 28% in 2012. In total, 64% of all app sessions now take place outside the U.S.

Enabled by digital distribution across the unprecedented growing base of iOS and Android smart devices, global software distribution has never been so frictionless. After building an application, a development team can distribute its app on Android instantaneously and, after review by Apple, can be in the App Store within roughly one week. With international growth accelerating, there has never been a better time, in the history of technology, to be a software developer.

The Great Distribution of Wealth Across iOS and Android Apps

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 23:19:22 +0000

The Great Distribution of Wealth Across iOS and Android Apps

By Peter Farago, VP Marketing

Anonymous Wed, 03/11/2015 - 16:19

2012-07-31

Tags

The iTunes App Store and Google Play now offer more than 600,000 apps each. And Apple’s most recent earnings call revealed that the company has paid out more than $5.5 billion to developers since the launch of the App Store. With unprecedented consumer adoption of iOS and Android devices, low barriers to entry for developers and throngs of paying customers, Apple and Google have created massive economic opportunities for developers.

In particular, iOS and Android have made it possible for independent developers and mobile app start-ups to thrive. As industries mature, however, we expect established players and brands to invade from other platforms, depressing opportunities for many early entrants. Along with this, we expect to see market revenue concentrate among fewer larger players. For this report, with these typical patterns in mind, Flurry modeled worldwide mobile app revenue, revenue sources and revenue concentration among top-ranked mobile apps on iOS and Android. For this report, we used data from over 200,000 mobile applications in the Flurry Analytics data set. Let’s start with market growth.

The chart above compares worldwide revenue generated by iOS and Android apps in 2011 vs. 2012. For 2012, we modeled the first half of the year based on actual data, and then applied growth rates to estimate the rest of the year based on the proportion of revenue observed in 2011 between the first and second half of that year. In 2011, Flurry calculates that iOS and Android applications generated a total of $5.4 billion across premium, in-app purchase and advertising revenue. Advertising made up 18% of the revenue. In 2012, Flurry forecasts that revenue will grow by 60% over the previous year, reaching $8.7 billion. Advertising is the fastest growing revenue category with growth forecasted at more than 100%, from $980 million in 2011 to $2 billion in 2012, delivering 23% of 2012 total revenue. Likewise, premium and in-app purchase revenue is also increasing at a rate of 50%, from $4.5 billion in 2011 to $6.7 billion in 2012.

Next, we look at the concentration of revenue among top ranked apps from 2010 to 2012. Please note that for this analysis, we focus on premium and in-app revenue only, excluding ad revenue. Comparing these two years shows how dramatically the distribution of revenue is shifting across the long tail. Starting on the left, in 2010, the green part of the column shows that 28% of revenue was generated by the Top 25 ranked titles on iOS and Android. In 2012, we estimate that the Top 25 will drop to commanding about half of total revenue, or 15%. Likewise, comparing the grey sections of each column, the rest of the Top 100 apps will drop from earning 27% of revenue in 2010 to 17% of revenue in 2012. Conversely, revenue generated by the long tail significantly grows from 2010 to 2012. Comparing the blue sections, any apps ranked beyond the top 100, we observe that long tail revenue explodes from earning under half of all premium and in-app purchase revenue in 2010 to over two-thirds in 2012.

Finally, we rank the revenue generated by each of the top 100 positions across the iTunes App Store and Google Play. For each year, we set the revenue generated by the top spot at 100%. Then, relative to the top spot, we take the percent each position generates from the 2^nd rank all the way through the 100th. By normalizing each curve in this way, we can compare the relative revenue generated per ranked position in the top 100 per year. For example, we can see whether ranking number 50 generates more relative revenue in 2012 versus 2010. Most interestingly, this kind of analysis shows whether the developer “middle class” is better off today than its “parents’” generation.

Now that we have relative earning power mapped per ranked position, we can study the heights and shapes of the curves. Comparing 2010, the green curve, to 2012, the blue curve, we notice that two things are happening simultaneously. First, each position in the top 100 is more valuable now, which makes sense because the market has grown overall. Second, the blue 2012 curve is flatter. Unlike the green 2010 curve, which steeply drops during the top 10 ranked positions, indicating the wealth is more concentrated at the top, the blue 2012 curve stabilizes shortly after the top 5 positions and then maintains a high, gently sloping plateau all the way through the 80^thposition, where it then settles just above the green curve, ostensibly continuing to “fly” at an altitude higher than that of the green curve out across the long tail. In short, this means that the middle class has more earning power, taking a substantial share of total wealth in the economy.

With the app economy booming, companies like Facebook, Twitter and Zynga are under tremendous pressure from investors to seize the opportunity presented by this new platform. However, with software delivered in the form of downloadable applications, unguaranteed network connectivity, different consumer behavior and control exerted by platform providers such as Apple and Google, the mobile app landscape creates different, meaningful challenges for companies attempting to enter the app space from other platforms. Combined with a marketplace that reduces the power of brand recognition (e.g., apps are free for consumers to try risk free), market wealth unexpectedly continues to shift to the long tail, funding continued R&D, advertising budgets and other activities that increase their competitive strength. The age of middle-class app developer has arrived. In this economy not only are the rich getting richer, but so too are the poor, and gaining on the rich.

Microsoft May Be Closer Than It Appears in Android's Rearview Mirror

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 23:17:25 +0000

Microsoft May Be Closer Than It Appears in Android's Rearview Mirror

By Peter Farago, VP Marketing

Anonymous Wed, 03/11/2015 - 16:17

2012-06-18

Tags

Android

App Insights

This week, wedged between Apple’s WWDC and Google I/O is Microsoft’s Windows Phone Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday, June 20. Additionally, Microsoft is holding a last-minute press conference that “you don’t want to miss” tonight in Los Angeles. Barnes & Noble claims they are not part of the announcement, and others speculate that Xbox Live streaming will be part of the offering. Given the popularity of gaming on smartphones and tablets, and the strength of the Xbox platform, this would be a strong move for Microsoft. Because the development community is strongly made up of gaming studios, a move such as this could help galvanize the 3^rd-party development community. Over the last couple of years, there has been an all-out war among Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM and others to win the hearts and minds of developers. It appears that Microsoft is now making its move.

This report follows up on another released by Flurry earlier this month, showing that Apple continues to hold a strong lead over Google’s Android for developer support. Looking beyond the top two platforms supported by developers, Flurry evaluates the possibility for a 3^rdlegitimate platform provider to emerge at this stage of the game. At Flurry, we track developer support across the platforms that compete for their commitment. When companies create new projects in Flurry Analytics, they download platform-specific SDKs for their apps. Since resources are limited, choices developers make to support a specific platform signal confidence, as they invest their R&D budget where they expect the greatest return. Flurry Analytics has been adopted by more than 70,000 companies across more than 190,000 applications. Let’s start with a comparison of the Research in Motion (RIM) versus Microsoft.

The chart above shows the percent of new project starts represented by Microsoft and RIM among all platforms Flurry supports (e.g., iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, etc.). A new project start in the Flurry system is when a developer sets up an application for analytics tracking prior to the launch of that app. Over the past 12 months, Project starts for Windows Phone have grown by more than 600%, now accounting for 6% of all new project starts in the Flurry system during June 2012. As a percent of new project starts, RIM has remained flat. Overall, on an absolute basis, total new project starts within Flurry have grown by approximately 50%.

We next combine all new projects across the top 4 platforms within the Flurry system, comparing Q2 2011 versus Q2 2012.

The chart above compares the percent of new projects built by developers per platform within Flurry. For this snapshot, we compare Q2 2011 versus Q2 2012. Year-over-year, developer support has shifted, with Microsoft’s dent becoming more visible, now representing 4% during Q2 2012. iOS and Android share continue to oscillate mildly now clocking in 67% for iOS and 28% for Android. BlackBerry remains flat. What is important to note is that all four platforms are growing, just at different rates. Specifically, growth rates per platform for year-over-year growth are: iOS 66%, Android 82%, Windows Phone 521%, BlackBerry 13%. Viewing the relative growth rates show just how much Microsoft is gaining against the market.

Considering the first chart in this report, Microsoft growth has been accelerating within Q2. If we look at just Android and Microsoft in the month of June, for every Windows Phone new project started, 4 have been started for Android. Considering the much smaller Windows Phone installed based compared to Android, Microsoft is currently over-indexing. From Google’s point-of-view, this must elevate Microsoft from an “also-ran” to a potential competitive threat with the resources and know-how to kick-start momentum and mount a campaign to reel in the second place player.

Generally, Windows Phone could be gaining against the entire market as a result of developer frustration for Android fragmentation, concern for increasing competition on iOS and a lack of faith in BlackBerry. Whatever the reason, it’s clear that Microsoft still knows how to attract third party developer support. With its Nokia-partnership and high anticipation around today’s Microsoft Tablet announcement, Flurry expects Microsoft to make continued headway over the course of 2012.