Though app users are the fastest growing segment of digital media and spend more time on their mobile devices, desktop and mobile browsers continue to drive audience growth.  “It’s still much easier to build a large audience on the desktop and mobile web because of more fluid linking of content,” according to the 2015 U.S. Mobile App Report by ComScore Inc.

Over the past two years, time spent on mobile apps grew 90% while mobile browser time rose 53% and desktop 16%.  Total digital media time usage was up 49% with mobile apps contributing to 77% of the total increase. ComScore’s mobile category includes both smartphones and tablets.

“Despite growing audiences on apps, the existing digital infrastructure makes it harder to build large audiences on apps than on the web. As evidenced, the mobile web still has 3.5 times more web properties with 5 million unique visitors than apps have,” the report said.

 In a comparison of the top 1,000 apps and the top 1,000 mobile web properties, mobile websites have audiences that are more than 2.5 times the size of apps. These website audiences grew 42% in a year, twice as fast as the 21% for apps. 

 Among the findings of the report:

•  Establishing app audiences is harder but once engaged, they are loyal.
•  Social media and entertainment account for the six top app categories and drive two-thirds of total time spent on apps.
•  Certain content categories are driven exclusively by apps with photos and instant messengers leading the way.
•  Millennials usage information from how their one-handed use of mobile devices affects app placement on home screen to a long term need to develop multi-platforms to effectively engage Millennials both with content and advertising.

 The ComScore report is based primarily on behavioral measurement from comScore Media Metrix® Multi-Platform, which provides reporting of digital audiences across desktop computers, smartphones and tablets, and comScore Mobile Metrix®, which provides reporting of mobile web and app audiences across both smartphones and tablets. The report also includes survey-based data from comScore MobiLens®.  The report also incorporates results from a survey of 1,084 smartphone users to understand their habits.