Common knowledge is that the mobile phone has already supplanted the desktop in the cultural everyday - users across the planet are picking up the smartphone first and foremost, referring to it regularly throughout the day.
A recent
survey from mobile marketers
TecMark found that UK smartphone users pick up the mobile phone a whopping 221 times per day.
The survey was completed by 2,000 smartphone users in the UK, 55.2% female and 44.8% male, each of which answered 22 questions related to smartphone usage. The average user first uses a smartphone at 7:31am - basically the first thing before even getting out of bed - and check Facebook and email, followed by train times, banking apps and Instagram.
One of the most poignant statistics surfaced by the results was that the usage aggregated to a grand total of 1 day of consistent smartphone usage per week. That means that the average respondent was spending a full one day per week on a smartphone! This is pretty powerful stuff for any travel marketers seeking real-time mobile marketing opportunities targeting UK consumers.
Other salient data points from this particular cohort were the most popular mobile apps for Brits:
- Reddit
- Twitter
- Instagram
- Facebook
- Tumblr
- WhatsApp
- Texting
- Browsing
- Pinterest
- Flight apps
For flight apps, the average respondent opened these apps 6 times per day. This is a fascinating statistic, which might underscore the self-selected cohort, or the fact that these apps are opened repeatedly during the course of a trip - so if a traveler was on the road one day per week, there could be a massive amount of use on that particular day.
Nonetheless, the fact that flight apps rank among daily media obsessions like Facebook and Reddit means that travel app developers must deliver a product on par with user experiences from these other outlets.
Another surprising element of this particular report is related to how often respondents used mapping applications on desktop and mobile - each were used four times, an even match across desktop and mobile. Wisdom says that mobile mapping is the primary use case, but in actual use, this cohort were equally likely to explore maps via the traditional desktop format.
(full-size infographic here)
NB: Mobile phone image courtesy Shutterstock.