Consumers love mobile apps, especially shopping apps via tablets and smartphones.
That's the finding in a new Flurry Analytics report on mobile app use in 2014. The year brought a 76 percent spike on mobile app use on average compared to 2013, and a 174 percent surge in shopping app use as compared to 2013.
The favorite time to tap an e-commerce app appears to be about 9 a.m., with use trailing off after a morning commute, according to the report. Activity spikes again around lunchtime hours.
The report notes Android users are quite busy, as shopping via Google's mobile OS jumped about 220 percent compared with 2013.
On the other end of the mobile app use spectrum, gaming app activity may be on the wane as apps are maturing. The app use grew the least of all categories tracked, with just a 30 percent increase compared with 2013. Even utility and messaging app activity bested game app use, with growth of 121 percent and 103 percent, respectively.
The gaming app install base is now at about 1 billion, with downloads at around 30 billion in 2014. An IDC report predicts annual downloads of mobile games will be 60 million by 2018.
Mobile app use is increasing due likely to one big reason: faster and more stable connectivity options such as LTE and public Wi-Fi, according an IDC report.
The proliferation of LTE and more public Wi-Fi will water and fertilize the growth of the mobile gaming market, according to IDC's report. With a wider availability of faster speeds and innovation in controls, the mobile gaming market could see its break-out multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) in 2015 -- and if the success of MOBAs on desktop computers is any indication, mobile entries in the genre will spur mobile gaming into a new age of prosperity.
