55% of Social Networking Consumption Occurs on A Mobile Device

February 27, 2013 by MarketingCharts staff

Consumers are spending an increasing amount of time performing various activities on mobile devices, finds comScore in its “US Mobile Future in Focus” [download page] report. In fact, in December of last year, comScore finds that 37% of total time spent online was via a mobile device, a far greater amount than the 23% GfK indicated in an earlier study. Among the categories that were above-average in mobile share of internet time were maps (84% mobile), weather (60%), music (57%), and social networking (55%).

The increasing use of mobiles for social networking has been well-documented recently: for example, a study from the NPD Group revealed that 27% of tablet and 20% of smartphone users are migrating their Facebook time from their PCs to their mobile devices. An earlier Nielsen study indicated that 40% of social networking consumption in July 2012 was via a mobile application or via the mobile web.

Some of the disparities between the comScore numbers and the figures from GfK (regarding total internet time on a mobile device) and Nielsen (concerning social media time on a mobile device) could be related to timing. While comScore’s data covers December 2012, the GfK study was conducted between February and July 2012, while the Nielsen data covers activity in July 2012.

Other Findings:

According to comScore, the most popular activities for smartphone users (looking at the 3-month period ending in December 2012) were sending text messages (90.5%), taking photos (83.4%), and using email (77.8%). For tablet owners, accessing search (73.9%) and email use (73.6%) were most common, followed by social networking (67.5%).
No surprises here: tablet owners were twice as likely as smartphone owners to purchase goods or services on their devices (38% vs. 19%).