Most people do not realize how smart their smartphones are! Smartphones are more advanced than laptops or PCs. Today’s smartphones can do anything that one can think of, as they are packed with tiny sensors which collect all kinds of data around us. Mobile Apps are a part of ever growing industry with applications flooding the market.

Old cell phones could only be used for calling and texting, but smartphones provide you with multiple ways to communicate. Bedsides calling and texting they also give access to emails and video calling/video conferencing facilities. One can also remain connected though social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Smartphone technology with broadband wireless connections, have made Web browsing extremely convenient. All this is possible, only because of smartphone apps.

There are very interesting researches that show the mobile behavior of the smartphone applications. Studies have shown that consumers spend around 85% of their time on smartphones in apps. Most consumers use the native applications on their smartphones. But there are only five basic apps that all consumers download form the App Store. These five apps primarily include areas like social media, instant messaging or gaming. Research has shown that users only use around 30 apps at the max, in a month. Findings have also shown that communication and social media, accounts for the maximum use of smartphones. These statistics indicate that a handful of applications are dominating the app world.

Social network claims to have 14% of all smartphone usage. The big names in this area are those of Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Yahoo and Microsoft, with Facebook being the leader in this area. Facebook has more than 1 billion active account users in a month. Instant messaging claims to have around 5% of all smartphone usage with apps like WhatsApp, WeChat, KakaoTalk and Line. But for imaging, native messaging applications see a higher usage. Media is another popular category of smartphone application which includes areas like weather, news and sports. Categories like games and music account for around 6% of smartphone usage. Other categories like Maps, Email and Shopping are also popular smartphone usage areas.

Apps provide a better user experience as compared to the smartphone and hence the shift to these apps. Users use smartphone apps four times more than they use mobile web browsers. ‘App junkies’ who like to install a number of apps in their systems, are the ones who consume most data. But the actual number of ‘app junkies’ are less. Majority of the normal smartphone users only download some two-five apps on their mobiles each month.

Smartphone apps need to have high degree of user relevance and friendliness to ensure that the app remains installed and is used continuously. Today there are all kinds of smartphone applications like social apps, sports apps, fitness apps, photography apps and entertainment apps to name a few.

In the last decade, smartphone evolved from a simple calling devise to a portable entertainment center. Sensor data with M2M and Internet of Things will see new waves of smartphone application in the near future. Most of your smartphones already have sensors like touch sensor, image sensor and several others like GPS to track location. Google map with route time estimate is an ideal example of a smartphone app employed with sensor information. It will not be long when using your smartphone; you can cook your food at home and water your plants, in your absence!