If you think the rise in VoIP usage is growing ever stronger, new research in that area proves you‘re right.
According to the just-released Mobile Strategies 360/Informate monthly app review, almost two-thirds (64 percent) of U.S.-based Android (News - Alert) smartphone owners used chat or VoIP apps on their phones in January.
“The approximately 650 U.S. consumers Informate analyzed on average spent 176 minutes per day with their Android smartphones during the month,” the survey found. “Four percent of that time, or about seven minutes, was in chat and VoIP apps, and 16 percent, or about 28 minutes, was spent on other communications activities, including phone calls and text messages,” the study discovered.
The research also found some disparity between the way men and women utilize VoIP.
The study said that while more females used chat or VoIP apps in January than males (66 percent vs. 61 percent), the men used the apps longer on average each day—about eight minutes for men vs. six minutes for women. Not surprisingly, consumers ages 18-24 use the apps for the longest length of time, averaging about 11 minutes per day.
Informate also discovered that half of all smartphone owners in the panel used the Facebook (News - Alert) Messenger app in January, making it the most popular chat app. That was followed by Google’s Hangout app with 14 percent and WhatsApp and Skype tied at nine percent.
For its part, Facebook said it plans to further expand the mobile chat-like service beyond instant message conversations between individuals or groups. That’s according to David Marcus (News - Alert), vice president of messaging products, who said as much in a recent blog.
Some 800 million consumers use Messenger each month, Marcus noted, adding that “It’s a good number, but we believe we have so much more opportunity ahead of us, and these are still the early days of Messenger.”