You doubled the time spent on a Smartphone or Tablet in 2015

Image courtesy of patrisyu at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It is time for one of these statistics comparing this to that.
Time spent on mobile devices was up 117% in the year compared to 2014, Flurry, a Yahoo-owned analytics company, said in a report on Tuesday. The data, which looks at worldwide smartphone and tablet use, found that usage among “phablet” owners, or those who have a large-screen smartphone, was up 334% year-over-year. In comparison, usage time was up 81% for small-screen slates and 26% for larger tablets.
By 2017, Flurry said that phablets will top smaller smartphones be the most-used mobile device type.
Phablets are a category of smartphones with large screens (generally in excess of five inches). While the devices have been available for a few years, phablet usage started to explode in 2014 following to premiere of Apple’s big-screen iPhone 6 Plus. Apple has since introduced an updated (and similarly popular) phablet in the iPhone 6s Plus. Meanwhile, competitors, including Samsung, LG, and others, have also found a welcoming marketplace for their own phablets.
Phablet popularity has translated to a significant growth rate in the way people access apps on those devices. For instance, Flurry found that between 2014 and 2015, use of news and magazine apps on phablets was up 721% year-over-year, compared to 135% across all mobile devices, including phablets. Use of sports apps was up 274% on phablets during the same period.
Flurry, which bases its information by tracking app usage on 2.1 billion smart devices around the world, found that total mobile device usage was up 58% in the last year. Although the rate was up, it was down from the 76% growth rate the mobile industry tallied in 2014.