Users now spend more time with photo and video apps than they do with games, according to a new report from apps analytics firm Flurry. Not only that, but these minutes spent with mobile apps may be cutting in to their YouTube viewing.
Between October 2011 and March 2012, Flurry found that photo & video app usage increased by 89 percent in terms of minutes spent, led by apps including Instagram, Path, Skout, Viddy, SocialCam, Evernote and Spotify.
Flurry notes that YouTube’s share of consumers’ video time is dropping and cautiously suggests it might be losing out to the more social newcomers that are built for mobile convenience, creation and sharing. “Just consider that it’s now possible to capture, edit, share and view engaging, meaningful videos among friends, all from your phone, without ever touching a computer. In this perspective, a threat to YouTube begins to feels real,” Flurry’s report reads.
Digging further, Flurry integrated its own data with that compiled by comScore Video Metrix, then compared video app usage to Google video usage, which is primarily YouTube.
It found that time spent viewing video content online grew from 276 minutes to 472 minutes, or 71 percent, during 2011. During that same time period, video apps time grew from 63 minutes to 152 minutes, or 141 percent.
Then Flurry looked at the 2012 data available so far and found that online video consumption dropped by 10 percent, while mobile app video consumption increased by an additional 52 percent. (See the chart, below.) By the end of March, consumers were spending 54 percent of amount of time in mobile video apps compared to Google Sites online, 231 minutes in apps versus 425 minutes online.
Related links:
Flurry – blog post
MediaPost – Flurry: Photo/Video Fastest-Growing App Category
VentureBeat – Will Viddy (and other video apps) kill the YouTube star?
Business Insider – YouTube May Be Feeling The Heat From Video Sharing Apps
Photo by Flickr user KaranJ, used under Creative Commons license
