Is the iPad a major advancement in computing, or is it just an upscale teckie trophy, something to be seen using?
The pace of sales would suggest the former. Apple is on pace to sell 30 million iPads this year. The rate of growth exceeds anything else Apple has launched.
But new app research raises some interesting questions.
Localytics looked at the length of time users spend with different apps, and the number of times they use them. Graphs of the results are shown at the left. Click to enlarge.
Users spend the most time with news and music apps.
Unfortunately, the results are expressed as a percentage of the average time spent with apps. Users spend 228% of the average with music apps.
We suspect that Localytics doesn’t share the actual time because it is quite short.
What’s more interesting is the second graph showing the number of times people use an app. Games lead at 13 times a month followed by news and music tied at 5 times.
So an iPad user accesses her music app about once a week, and spends about two and a quarter times more time than the average app–-whatever that number is.
What does accessing a music app just once a week say about music apps?
Perhaps the iPad is more a toy than a really useful tool. Maybe users access their music with their iPhone or computer mostly and the iPad only occasionally.
Or maybe the app is the toy, just something to play with occasionally.
Either way, the study raises more questions than answers. But they are interesting questions.
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