Mixed messages around mobile web and apps coming in via comScore mobile data.

comScore looked at smartphone users to identify top mobile sites and how those sites engage their users. They compared app use to mobile web use.

Analysis of the share of time spent across apps and browsers revealed that even though these access methods had similar audience sizes, apps drove the lion’s share of engagement, representing 4 in every 5 mobile media minutes. [emphasis added]

But not all properties were equal. They reported “widely varying degrees of time spent between app and browser access methods.”

• On Facebook 80% of time spent was spent on apps compared to  20% via browser.
• Twitter users use apps for 96.5% of all minutes.
• eBay users spend 82.4% using apps rather than mobile web.
• Microsoft Sites, in contrast, saw browser access driving  usage at 82.1%.
• The Weather Channel is more closely split with 53% of time spent via their apps and 47% on mobile web.

Wikipedia is a top property on smartphones, but doesn’t have an app. You can see a chart of top sites and access here.

What can government learn from this mixed message? Does this encourage the building of apps over mobile web? Hard to say. It isn’t easy for agencies to measure the amount of time their users spend on apps versus mobile web, so it’s hard to make the comparison for agency sites.

The best strategy may be to focus on publishing machine-readable content–that is information, data and services–so that it can be  be served on any platform (and future platforms).

Time to do our homework and invest in a device and platform agnostic future!

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