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Report: Americans spend 2:38 hours a day glued to their tablets and smartphones

By
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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By
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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April 3, 2013, 7:28 PM ET

FORTUNE — The iPhone was barely a year old and Apple (AAPL) had not yet launched the App Store when Flurry Analytics began measuring mobile usage and helping developers sell ads.

Today Flurry measures the activity of more than 1 billion active mobile iOS and Android devices a month, and to celebrate its fifth anniversary Wednesday it posted the chart above, part of a report titled It’s an App World. The Web Just Lives in It.

Among its findings:

  • Americans who own smartphones or tablets spend, on average, 2 hours and 38 minutes “glued” (Flurry’s word) to their mobile devices.
  • Only 20% (31 minutes) of that time is spent on a mobile browser — which as far as Flurry is concerned is now just another app.
  • More than 50 of those minutes are spent playing games — the single largest category of apps.
  • Nearly half an hour is spent on Facebook (FB). Twitter and the other social networking apps account for less than 10 minutes.
  • About 19 minutes are spent on Apple’s Safari browser, six and a half minutes on Google’s (GOOG) Android browser and a little more than three minutes on Opera Mini.
  • E-mail is categorized under Productivity — three minutes total.

The full report is available on the Flurry blog.

About the Author
By Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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