A new study by Flurry, a mobile-analytics company, shows that usage of mobile apps is rapidly catching up with television.
Flurry CEO Simon Khalaf reports that the company has tracked a total of a trillion "events"—actions inside apps like finishing a game level or making a restaurant reservation. Those numbers have grown exponentially in the past two years.
All those taps and swipes translate to a significant amount of usage.
In the US, time spent on the Web has stagnated at 70 minutes per day. Television watching has grown slightly, from 162 minutes to 168 minutes. But app usage has almost doubled from 66 minutes to 127 minutes a day. At current growth rates, it should catch up with television within a year.
This isn't necessarily bad for television content producers, Khalaf notes, who are increasingly adapting their shows to be watched alongside a tablet or smartphone—the "second screen" phenomenon.
"We believe that, with the introduction of connected TVs, TV shows will behave like apps," he writes.
Flurry's results match what other observers are saying, like Kleiner Perkins Internet expert Mary Meeker.
But as Peter Kafka of AllThingsD points out, the explosion of mobile usage doesn't necessarily mean a mobile-ad bonanza.
And since we're not getting more hours in the day, it's pretty clear that the increased usage of apps must be happening simultaneously with other activities—like, yes, watching television.
