U.S. Mobile Users Show Facebook and Instagram Their Love

In other parts of the world, messaging apps are all the rage, but in the United States, things are a little different, according to a 2015 study conducted by App Annie.

This study looked at five key app markets around the world, which included the U.S., United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and South Korea. Their study compared and contrasted how apps are shaping the way people use their mobile devices. They focused on the categories and individual apps that dominated the use of iOS and Android mobile devices in Q1 2015, according to the App Annie report.

We use our smartphones to communicate with the world: scroll our Facebook timelines, posts pics to Instagram, email our bosses, call our mothers on Sundays, text our spouses, read community news, book travel arrangements, search for new homes, and to play games. So, it’s not a shock the report found that within every key market, apps in the Communication and Social categories accounted for at least 40% of smartphone sessions on Android devices.

“The Communication and Social categories played a key role in app engagement across all five major markets,” according to App Annie’s study. “In South Korea, the Communication and Social categories accounted for around 60% of all Android smartphone app sessions in Q1 2015, while Germany and the United States were not far behind this level.”

For the U.S., Social continued to be on top based on sessions per active user, which in large part is due to Facebook’s popularity here in the states. However, in Germany, Japan, South Korea, and U.K., Communication was leading the way because of their love for messaging apps.

Why is this case? It seems to be a cultural thing. In the U.S., users tend to lean more towards one-to-many type of communication through social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, while other countries, like Japan and U.K., prefer one-to-one communication.

We like to socialize with many at one time, and to prove that assessment, according to the report, Facebook saw the most smartphone sessions in the U.S., while Facebook and Instagram saw the most time spent in apps.

What this report ultimately showcases is how much mobile has changed the online experience for users, whether in the U.S. or other key markets. “On computers, the browser was the primary means of accessing the wider web and engaging with content. But on mobile, much of users’ time and web consumption is spent using social apps. That is why recent moves like Facebook’s announcement that it will offer full news articles that open up right in the News Feed make sense – for many consumers, Facebook is the web when they’re on their phones,” according to TechCrunch.com.

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