The folks at Yahoo! / Flurry Analytics regularly post Flurry Insights, gleaned from data accumulated from their analytics SDK that’s embedded in hundreds of thousands of mobile devices. Back in 2015, they posted data they’d accumulated about mobile device usage in the Canadian market:

Some quick notes from the above:

• 86% of time on a mobile device is spent in an app; only 14% of the time are users in a web browser
• Social media apps (Facebook, Twitter and various others) gobble up 37% of time – roughly a third of the time someone is using their phone/tablet – all on their own
• Playing music, reading an e-book or watching a video is how 9% of time is spent by Canadians on their mobile device

Of course, that’s not to say that you can’t create an app that takes up 50% of someone’s time on their devices, even over the long haul. But it’s clear that for the average Canadian, there’s only a small slice of time that they’re likely to spend using the new app you’ve created for them.

Next up: What kind of devices are in use out there? Flurry Analytics has a second post (from 2016 this time) with a global form factor breakdown:

References:

• Flurry Analytics: The Canada Report: The Great White North Testing Ground
• Flurry Analytics: On Their Tenth Anniversary, Mobile Apps Start Eating Their Own