It's official: For the first time ever, people spend more time in mobile apps than they do watching television. So says a new report from Flurry Insights. So if you're a mobile developer, the future is very bright. The report found that for the second quarter of 2015, the average U.S. consumer spent 198 minutes on mobile apps each day, versus 168 minutes watching TV. That's a big turnaround from a year ago, when the average U.S. consumer spent only 139 minutes in mobile apps, and spent 168 minutes watching TV. The numbers in favor of mobile are even more dramatic than that, though. The time spent in apps doesn't include time spent using a mobile browser, which after all, is an app. If you add that in, the average consumer spent 220 minutes per day using mobile apps, leaving TV in the dust. The reality may be even more skewed than that, Flurry says. In its blog post, Flurry notes that many people, notably Generations Y and Z, frequently watch TV and use apps at the same time. About TV-watching, the blog says, "It is hard to say how much of [TV] time is actual watching, versus having background noise to the plethora of apps being actively consumed on mobile devices." What It Means In Dollars All this if of more than just theoretical interest. It also has a significant financial impact. The report found that for the first time, revenue from in-app purchases will exceed revenue from mobile ads. In 2015, Flurry says, in-app purchases will top $33 billion, while the mobile ad industry (not including search) will generate $31 billion. In 2014 the numbers were flipped: $21 billion for in-app purchases and $23 billion for the mobile ad industry apart from search. For app and mobile developers, this is all good news, particularly when you add time spent in mobile browsers to time spent in apps. It shows that developers could use a tool that let them build an app once, and then deploy it to multiple platforms -- iOS, Android, the mobile Web, and Windows Phone. We think that Alpha Anywhere fits the ticket.
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