Facebook apps dominate app usage and engagement metrics

Social and instant messaging apps are the most used by mobile users, with Facebook leading the pack according to new study.

The data shows that social and chat apps are dominating the high end of mobile app usage, with Facebook’s apps, including Facebook, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram, driving high engagement metrics around the world.

Mobidia Technology, a provider of mobile usage data, with research firm ABI, have released  a new whitepaper analysing popular social and messaging apps and their usage and engagement metrics in top mobile markets.

The analysis, which was based on data from millions of smartphone users across the globe, including those in the UK, China, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, and the US, looked at the top social and chat apps as well as videoconferencing, rich media, and VoIP apps. 

The study shows that in the US, Facebook drove the most monthly usage of all apps with 68% of analysed users averaging 730 minutes per month or 24 minutes per day.

In Western Europe, Facebook’s WhatsApp led usage engagement with 73% of analysed users averaging 612 minutes per month or 20 minutes per day.

Facebook’s own mobile app realied engagement of 60% with users averaging 500 minutes per month, and its Instagram app followed with engagement of 20% and users averaging 300 minutes on the app per month.

On a global basis, the Facebook app consistently experiences the highest monthly utilisation results in all major markets (excluding South Korea, Japan and Germany), with over 50 percent of users analysed engaging with the app every month.

“Social and chat apps are clearly having an impact on mobile data usage, and the performance of Facebook’s app portfolio is impressive,” said Chris Hill, senior vice president of marketing at Mobidia. “We expect to see other app developers taking inspiration from the engagement metrics that Facebook has been able to achieve.”

With a global set of data provided by millions of smartphone users, Mobidia is able to provide the mobile industry ecosystem with detailed and unique insights into real subscriber behavior surrounding data and application-specific usage on all the networks to which smartphones and tablets connect, including mobile cellular (and LTE), roaming and Wi-Fi. The data includes both aggregate data amounts consumed by, and time spent in, millions of mobile applications, rather than download data, forecasts or limited SDK-based data sets.