Editor’s Note: The following article is reprinted from Network World.
New research conducted over the past two months shows that Apple iPhone users mainly use their apps at night and on weekends, indicating the smartphone apps are currently used more for personal than work purposes.
The study was conducted by a Cambridge, Mass., company called Localytics that provides a service that enables iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and Android apps publishers to track in real time how customers use their software.
Localytics found that mobile app usage peaked on weekdays in the United States and Canada at 9 p.m. EST and that it ramped up during late morning on weekends and sustained heavy usage throughout the day and into the night. The apps monitoring firm found that iPhone users generate 7 percent more traffic on the average weekend day than on the average weekday.
Localytics says its findings might bode well for the Apple iPad, which is seen mainly as a consumer device, though some are intrigued by its possible enterprise applications.
With smartphone use expected to double over the next few years and 2010 being called by some The Year of the Smartphone, IT pros are preparing for an onslaught of mobile app usage at work as organizations figure out how to best exploit the technology.