Messaging and social apps led the way to a triple-digit jump in app use by smartphones last year

A new study completed by researcher Flurry, shows that app use by smartphone users exploded last year. Use of mobile apps on these intelligent handsets rose 114% over the prior year, led by messaging and social apps. That category alone saw a 203% increase in use last year over 2012, led by such apps as Snapchat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, KakaoTalk, and LINE. Flurry tracked 1.126 trillion app sessions last year, including 4.7 billion sessions tracked on New Year's Eve alone.

Utilities and productivity apps had the next largest increase in use at 149%. Those two categories were followed by Music, Media and Entertainment (78%), Lifestyle and Shopping (77%), Games (68%), Sports Health and Fitness (49%) and News and Magazines (31%).

Snapchat had a fantastic 2013. The messaging app offers video, photo and text messages that disappear after 10 seconds. In June, the company completed a $60 million round of financing at a valuation of $800 million and by the end of the year Snapchat was turning down offers of $3 billion and $4 billion from Facebook and Google respectively. But as the calendar turned to 2014, 4.6 million Snapchat subscribers had their phone numbers and usernames partially leaked as a way to show up the company for not closing exploits pointed out by a security company. Snapchat has since announced that it will update the app to make it more secure.


source: Flurry via AppleInsider