Nielsen has released a new report [download page] containing a range of figures related to how US consumers use different forms of media and devices. Among them, a breakdown of the top 8 activities performed on mobiles, by function. The top activity, texting, occupies 14.1% of consumers’ mobile time. Coupled with the 5.3% devoted to email and instant messaging, that means that about 1 in every 5 minutes spent on a mobile phone is spent messaging in some form. The next biggest category? Social networking, which occupies 10.2% of mobile time.
The other top functions consumers spend time with are:
- Dialer (5.5%);
- Music (4.4%);
- Browser (3.3%);
- Maps/location apps (2.8%); and
- Camera (0.9%).
Meanwhile, the top activities on computers are substantially different, according to Nielsen, though the computer breakdown focuses on online time only. Social networks and blogs occupy a leading 20.1% share of online time on computers, followed by online games (8.1%), email (7.1%), videos/movies (5.2%), portals (3.7%), and search (3.2%).
A comparison from GfK on share of internet time spent by device (mobile vs. computer) can be found here, and a look at the most regularly performed activities by device, according to Harris Interactive, can be found here.
About the Data: The Nielsen mobile time data is from Nielsen’s Mobile NetView, August 2012, while the computer time spent data is from Nielsen’s NetView, September 2012.
