Mid-size phones such as Apple’s iPhone see the most regular usage, while phablets have the least amount of regular usage among mobile devices, a new report has found.
Flurry Analytics has this week published a report based on data it collects from the 1 billion smartphones and tablets the company detects every month via its network. The report focused on the top 200 device models, which represent more than 80% of all usage.
The device models have been split into five different size groups: small phones with 3.5" or under screens such as BlackBerries; medium phones with screens between 3.5" and 4.9" such as Apple’s iPhones; phablets with a screen size of between 5" and 6.9" such as Samsung’s Galaxy note; small tablets like Apple’s iPad mini and full-size tablets including the 10" iPad.
Overall, 16% of devices have screen sizes on less than 3.5" diagonally, while 69% fall into the medium category, 2% into the phablet category, 6% into small tablets and 7% into full-size tablets.
The report counts the number of active users in each category, as well as the number of app sessions recorded from each device type. While 16% of the device models fall into the small phones category, these only account for 7% of active devices and 4% of overall app sessions.
On the other hand, tablets account for 7% of the top 200 device models, but make up 13% of all active users and 13% of all app sessions.
"The ‘is it a phone or is it a tablet’ devices otherwise known as phablets have attracted interest, but currently command a relatively small share (2%) of the device installed based, and their share of active users and sessions is also relatively small," reads Flurry’s report, which also describes ‘phablets’ as a "fad".
It’s been speculated that Apple could be working on its own phablet, dubbed iPhone plus or iPhablet, but Flurry’s report suggests that Apple shouldn’t rush to push out a larger device as they may be short lived in the mobile market.
When evaluating the distribution of active users by form factor across different operating systems, Apple’s iOS has the highest share of active devices using large tablets, at 24%, while Android is the only operating system in the phablet market, with 7% of devices running it falling into that category.
Despite the launch of Microsoft’s Surface tablet, the only Windows device models that are in Flurry’s top 200 are medium-sized phones.
In addition, Flurry’s report also highlights how long users of the five different form factors are spending across popular app categories.
The results show that medium-sized phones are used the most for playing games, reading books and watching videos, but tablets are the favoured device for playing games, with a total of 29% of gaming app session time attributed to tablet devices.
"We expect that tablets may represent a greater share of time spent in book and video apps in the future as tablet ownership expands and tablet owners branch out into more types of apps," Flurry notes.
IDG News Service
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