Mobile Users Prefer Apps Over Browsers

Mobile users love their apps and that love affair has outstripped their interest in browsers. That’s according to comScore’s latest mobile subscriber data for November, which found that the percentage of users who use apps has finally surpassed the percent of subscribers who turn to a mobile browser.

ComScore said that 44.9 percent of people used apps in November, compared to 44.4 percent who used a browser. That appears to mark the first time since comScore started noting mobile content usage that app usage has surpassed browser usage. Apps have trailed the browser by just a few percentage points for most of the last two years, but people have still preferred the browser until now.

This follows a similar finding from earlier this year from Flurry, which found that minutes spent per day on apps eclipsed that of time spent on a browser for the first time in June. As some of our commenters noted, it doesn’t necessarily mean that HTML5 is waning, and in fact, some apps are built in HTML5 and wrapped with a native shell. But it shows that people’s interest in apps continues to grow, and that there is value for a lot of people in purpose-driven software that can take them directly to what they want or can make better use of their mobile hardware.

According to other comScore data, Android is close to taking a majority of all smartphone users in the U.S., with its market share growing to 46.9 percent in November, up from 43.8 percent in August. Apple also managed to grow to 28.7 percent, up from 27.3 percent in August. The two leaders continue to sap away market share from Research in Motion, which saw its market share decline from 19.7 percent to 16.6 percent over the same period. Microsoft also continues to wait for Windows Phone 7 to begin gaining traction. Its share of the smartphone market in the U.S. declined from 5.7 percent to 5.2 percent.

These two big data points aren’t completely unrelated. Users love their apps and the two most robust app platforms are iOS and Android. As subscribers continue to prize smartphones for their apps, they will increasingly look to the platforms that give them the best quality and selection of mobile software titles. That’s obviously not the only reason to buy a phone, but it shows again why it’s so hard for RIM and Microsoft to hold their own or close the distance on Apple and Google. They must overcome iOS and Android’s app advantage.

Global Mobile Payment Market to Hit 1 Billion Users

IE Market Research, a Canadian telecommunications consultant, estimates that global mobile payments transactions will rise to $1.13 trillion in 2014, a compound annual growth rate of 94.8%.

It found that mobile payments continued growing in 2009 with the total number of users increasing to 351.4 million.

Globally, the researchers expect the number of mobile payment users to rise to 1.06 billion in 2014 for a CAGR of 20.5%. On the transaction value side, the gross value of mobile payments transactions was $37.4 billion in 2009. Mainstream take-up of mobile payments will happen in the 2011 – 2013 time frame, they forecast, and in 2014, the gross value of mobile payment transactions will reach $1.13 trillion.

Closer to home, the researchers expect North American (Canada and the United States) mobile payments to rise to $288.4 billion in 2014, a CAGR of 98.7%. These two countries will account for 25% of the world market share for mobile payments by gross transaction values.

The biggest growth in North America likely will come from ticketing (CAGR of 138%) and digital purchases (CAGR of 120%). The introduction of various devices by Apple has changed the game on consumer acceptance of digital purchases using mobile devices, especially in North America. Surveys suggest that consumers are increasingly comfortable with the use of the mobile device as a payment tool.

While near-field communication transactions in North America will grow faster than in Europe or Asia-Pacific, surveys suggest that the level of acceptance for these is fairly low in North America. The number of NFC transactions in Western Europe was 17.4 times higher than in North America.