A new report from Mobidia, a mobile measurement and analytics company, sheds lights on the booming social media apps market, suggesting that Facebook’s decision last year to remove the messaging functionality from its core app has had a positive impact on growth.

“Since August we saw Facebook’s messenger app continue to climb the active user ranks to align with WhatsApp after Facebook forced users to download their separate messenger app to use mobile chat functionality,” said the report. “Although users were forced to download the app, their habits didn’t change.”

Facebook itself is still at the top of the social networking leaderboard, accounting for up to 11 per cent of device time (particularly in the UK). “Facebook users are shown to spend, on average, over 12 hours in the app per month, hours ahead of its competitors,” noted the report. In contrast, Pinterest registered 2 hours of monthly app time, Twitter had 3 hours, and Snapchat and Instagram both 4 hours.

The report analysed Android and iOS usage across 9 countries; USA, Canada, Mexico, UK, Germany, Spain, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong.

However, WhatsApp continued to lead the way in terms of sessions and time spent in its app, followed by Line, Viber and Facebook Messenger in last place (see image below, click to enlarge).

mobidia

Google dominated the top of the app charts throughout Q4 with Google, YouTube, Google Maps, Gmail, Google + and Google Chrome all making the leaderboard throughout North America, with Facebook and Facebook Messenger joining them as some of the top apps.

Overall, social apps accounted for up to 16 per cent of total device time across the UK, USA and South Korea, the report noted

Gaming apps
As for games, Trivia Crack has been on a slow journey to the top of the gaming charts over the past year.

In April 2014 it was at the top of Mobidia’s leaderboard in Argentina, and two months later, it found itself ranking number one on the iOS leaderboard in the US and number two on Android.

Candy Crush is at the top of the Android gaming charts, although Clash of Clans users are more active and spend more time playing than Candy Crush players.

Line Corporation continues to dominate Japan’s and Hong Kong’s leaderboard with 6 games currently featuring in Japan’s top 20 most used apps.

“The mobile gaming sector was a highly competitive segment… Expensive, prime time TV ads from the leading publishers were not an uncommon sight as publishers battled for users,” said the study.