Owners of Android devices spend an average of 42 minutes per day with “add on applications” such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Skype, more than 60 percent more than BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, or Symbian users, according to a study published by analytics company Zokem. This includes apps embedded into handsets by vendors when they ship in order to complement core features such as voice, SMS and personal information management, as well as apps downloaded from stores. However, the study, which is based on real-life usage data collected with on-device meters, also shows that third-party apps lag use of “platform apps”, which by far dominate in terms of smartphone “face time.”

According to Zokem, 69 percent of Android usage time is still spent on core apps, compared with just 31 percent for add-on software – although this is a higher proportion than for other platforms. In second place is Microsoft’s aging Windows Mobile, where 26 percent of “face time” is apps compared with 74 percent spent on core apps.  In contrast, 14 percent of Symbian usage time is spent on apps, which falls to 12 percent for BlackBerry users. Although the data does not yet include Apple’s iOS platform, Zokem will incorporate this into future analysis.

Dr Hannu Verkasalo of Zokem says: “I think this finding about Windows Mobile reflects the fact that Windows Mobile devices have always been very much up for customisation – vendors like HTC and Samsung, and carriers like Vodafone and T-Mobile, have included all kinds of add-on apps from Facebook to VoIP clients, and from office apps to instant messaging clients into Windows Mobile devices, and this shows in the statistics.”

However, these percentages only show part of the picture. Zokem notes that “absolute face time with Windows Mobile is very low,” which means that users actually spend a similar amount of time interacting with add-on apps as BlackBerry and Symbian users – in the 10—15 minutes per day range. Not only do Android users spend relatively more time on add-on apps, but they also spend more time with the device in general – therefore the absolute time spent with add-on apps is “significant.” 

“This finding is not completely surprising – we have known that the wide variety of add-on apps bundled into Android phones together with the success of Android in the developer community, and consequently in the app store business, will contribute to Android’s advantage also in the forthcoming future. However, the differences to competing platforms were larger than what we expected,” Verkasalo says.  www.zokem.com