14 DAY TRIAL // A newly published study from GetJar shows that the impressive growth in the use of mobile applications has led to great changes in the consumer choices, as well as in their behavior. The company made a survey on over 2000 European users and social networking applications tend to be used more and more instead of voice calls. Moreover, it also shows that users access the same amount of news as they would receive from a newspaper or from television, and they are surfing on the web through their mobile phones more than they would via the personal computer.
When asked if they used their mobile phone or their PC to access the Internet, 70 percent of the subjects answered that they would go for the former rather than the latter. 43 percent of the surveyed consumers stated that they used mobile applications when traveling on public transport, 17 percent did it before going to sleep at night, while 14 percent would resort to them when they had nothing else to do.
Accessing social networks from the mobile phone is also a rather popular activity these days, offering users new means to stay in touch with one another. 30 percent of the surveyed subjects stated that they made use of their handsets for social networking (while using applications like Nimbuzz, eBuddy and Mig33) more than for voice calls. Email and messaging apps have also gained a lot of popularity lately, with 25 percent of the subjects going for such a solution rather than using games (24 percent) or music (15 percent).
“A massive 62% use their mobile to play games more than a PC or gaming console, clear indication that the quality of mobile games and the accessibility of the mobile phone are making mobile gaming a mass market trend. Consumers are also increasingly using their mobile as their primary source of news, at the expense of traditional mass media channels such as newspapers and TV, with 49% of those surveyed preferring to get their news via their mobile phone,” says the report.
Another interesting fact is that those who would use their mobile phone for data services also tend to use it for a wide range of other things, starting with social networking and ending with news reading. The GetJar report shows some other interesting facts in the matter:
“Respondents revealed that the worldwide growth in mobile apps – GetJar alone supplies over 30 million downloads per month – is led by word of mouth recommendation (33%) and by mobile browsing and search (17%). The ‘Apple effect’ was less pronounced, with only 3% reporting that they had first heard about mobile apps via Apple’s advertising campaigns. Only 43% of those surveyed use their operators portal to look for the mobile content they want, meaning a massive 57% are going “off-deck” to satisfy their content cravings.”