Fascinating stats released by ComScore this week showing the apparent dominance of applications in the lives of users at the expense of mobile web browsing.
In a report to highlight the launch of its Mobile Metrix 2.0 service, ComScore found US mobile users in March 2012 spent 18.5% of their mobile time browsing websites, compared to the other 81.5% of their time on applications.
The 80-20 split is mirrored for most of the top sites for mobile use, with Facebook, various Google sites and eBay all sticking to the ratio. Only Wikipedia, which has no official application, bucked the trend with 100% of use coming via the mobile web.
The data supports a recent theory put forward by TripAdvisor, which says that if a user is visiting a mobile website five or more times a year then it is probably worth creating an application.
In other words: once users get used to an application, then they will generally stick with it rather than use the mobile web version of a brand.
Meanwhile, social networks on mobiles continue to grow.
ComScore found in March 2012 that the average time spent on Facebook via a mobile (app and mobile web combined) during the month was an eye-watering 440 minutes (over seven hours).
Twitter use came in lower at just under two hours, but destination check-in service FourSquare (which generally takes no more than just a minute or so to pinpoint and log the user's location) was two and three-quarters hours.
Relative newbie Pinterest was just 53 minutes.
NB:Mobile app people image via Shutterstock.