How to tell if you're a 'mobile addict'

Mike Snider | USA TODAY

Smartphone and tablet users just can't get enough of their mobile devices. Some do nearly everything with phone in hand.

U.S. consumers spend, on average, three hours and 40 minutes each day on their mobile devices, an increase of 35% from a year ago in the second quarter of 2014. And that time spent on mobile devices continues to increase, said Simon Khalaf, senior vice president of publishing products at Yahoo.

Globally there are 280 million "mobile addicts," who use apps more than 60 times daily. Effectively, "these folks are conducting their lives on mobile," Khalaf said. Regular users access apps up to 16 times daily, Flurry's research found.

Over the last six months, the average time consumers spend on their phones or devices has increased by 43 minutes, or 24%, he said. "This is the mobile revolution," Khalaf said. "There hasn't been a single industry that hasn't been disrupted by mobile and its applications."

Khalaf revealed the findings Wednesday at Yahoo's mobile developer conference in New York. The new data, also posted on the Yahoo Developer Tumblr page, came from mobile analytics company Flurry, which he was CEO of when Yahoo acquired Flurry in July 2014, and other sources including comScore and NetMarketShare. Flurry tracks 720,000 apps across two billion mobile devices.

Time spent in apps dominated user activity, accounting for 90% of mobile device time, compared to 10% spent on mobile web browsers. Social, messaging and entertainment apps such as YouTube accounted for more than half of time (51%) spent on mobile.

Time spent consuming media more than doubled from a year ago, up 108%, to 96 minutes daily. And global consumer spending on in-app purchases rose from $21 billion in 2014 to $33 billion this year. "In mobile industry, content is king again," Khalaf said. "What is even more phenomenal is that people are paying for content."

Yahoo hopes to help mobile users discover content more easily by allowing developers to include one-click sharing of content on social media site Tumblr, which Yahoo acquired in May 2013. App developers will be able to track how the content is used.

"You can create any content you want, share it on Tumblr and all of a sudden you get traffic and you get consumers," Khalaf said. "You are no longer contributing and getting nothing back."

Mobile photo editing app PicsArt is the first to get the Tumblr in-app sharing feature. The integration should help foster a "mobile circle of creativity," said PicsArt CBO Wilson Kriegel who joined Tumblr CEO David Karp onstage at the event.

"We are so excited to see more of the great original content (from) editorial teams and user-generated content created by users ... flow into Tumblr," Karp said.

In other developments, Yahoo announced the ability for app developers to add native video advertisements. And Flurry Analytics will begin offering free real-time app activity to developers.

Better advertisements and improved feedback can help create "a defining moment between marketer and consumer," said Yahoo chief revenue officer Lisa Utzschneider.

As part of a new partnership with Girls Who Code, Yahoo is creating an app development curriculum that will go to 500 Girls Who Code clubs next month. Tumblr and Flickr, a Yahoo property since 2005, will host student project demos in the spring.

Follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @MikeSnider