Android Users Prefer Apps Over the Web

According to a recently published report from Nielsen, the owners of mobile phones running under Google's Android operating system spend more time playing with the applications installed on their devices than browsing the web.

Apparently, users would rather have software installed on their devices to enjoy various features than having to launch a browser to benefit from the same capabilities on the Internet.

“When consumers use their mobile phones to check the news, weather, email, or their social networks, they often have a choice between the mobile web version or a specially-created mobile app. But which do they prefer? Mobile apps – at least in terms of time spent,” Nielsen notes in a blog post.

The said report from Nielsen Smartphone Analytics shows that Android users in the United States spend on average about 56 minutes per day enjoying applications and the Internet on their devices.

But when it comes down to the actual time spent using applications versus the time spent on the web, users seem to be attracted more towards the software on their devices.

Two thirds of the almost an hour time they spend playing with the phone goes to applications, while the rest is reserved for browsing the web.

Even more interesting is the fact that the number of applications that actually caught users' attention is a small one. Only few of the thousands of apps available for Android make up the vast majority of time spent.

“In fact, the top 10 Android apps account for 43 percent of all the time spent by Android consumers on mobile apps,” the report from Nielsen Smartphone Analytics shows.

“The top 50 apps account for 61 percent of all time spent. With 250,000+ Android apps available at the time of this writing, that means the remaining 249,950+ apps have to compete for the remaining 39 percent of the pie.”