Mobile app usage growth shows signs of slowing

The mobile apps industry managed to achieve growth throughout last year, but signs suggest that usage growth is slowing down, according to Yahoo unit Flurry.

Over the last year, the Flurry footprint grew to track more than 940,000 applications, across 2.1 billion devices, in 3.2 trillion sessions. In this context, app usage is defined as a user opening an app and recording what Flurry calls a “session”, as well as the amount of time spent in the application.

Compared to the year prior, overall app usage grew by 11% and time-spent in apps grew by 69%. In previous years, all app categories had grown in tandem. However, this year the story is different.

Mobile apps started eating their own, with session and time-spent growth in some app categories occurring at the expense of others. While Messaging and Social applications drove year-over-year session grow at 44%, the Personalization category gave up a staggering 46% in session usage. This steep decline in usage can be attributed to diminishing value for users of these products.

In 2016, time spent in Social and Messaging apps grew by a strong 394% over the previous year, proving to be the driver that helped mobile achieve its year-over-year time-spent growth of 69%.

This is a result of consumers using their social and messaging apps as their voice and video calling utilities, as well as the phenomenon Flurry calls Communitainment. With news and magazines sessions down 5% and Music, Media and Entertainment up only 1%, it’s safe to say that Social has absorbed the media industry.

Business and Finance (up 43% in time-spent) and Sports (up 25% in time-spent) categories were immune to growth decay because they are intrinsically centered around mobile activities and rely on real time data.

Gaming, the app category formerly known as “the darling of the mobile industry” saw time-spent decline by 4% year-over-year. Users are increasingly comfortable paying their way through games, with the mobile gaming industry seeing a strong increase in revenues according to Apple’s latest App Store report. Additionally, gaming remains a hit-driven industry.

This year’s first “hit”, Pokémon Go, faded relatively fast, as consumers lost interest in the game, only returning for marquee holiday events. Another notable hit, Super Mario Run, was released too late in the year to make a difference for the overall engagement numbers.