Mobile Addiction Could Mean Highs for Mobile Developers
If you are a developer or tester looking for an industry to get into or transition to, then I’d like to suggest mobile. Why mobile? The percentage of mobile addicts—defined as a user who launches a mobile app or opens a mobile process more than sixty times a day—has grown by 123 percent in the past year.
The term mobile addict was defined by Flurry, a mobile analytics firm, which looked at data from more than five hundred thousand apps across 1.3 billion mobile devices.
Between March 2013 and March 2014, the number of mobile users becoming mobile addicts grew by nearly a hundred million. The trend is expected to continue, and it’s simple economics that more mobile users—addicts or otherwise—means more of a demand for content, applications, and functionality for mobile devices.
As more and more people grow up in a world with mobile devices readily available, more consumers expect their mobile devices to be able to handle or improve nearly every task or type of communication. But it isn’t just the young individuals who grew up with mobile who are leading the mobile-reliant revolution. As the article on mobile addiction from CNBC points out, middle-aged consumers make up more than 28 percent of the mobile addict population.
Noteworthy in this trend is the fact that some users describe themselves as "mobile-first" users, meaning they use their mobile devices as their primary extension to the Internet and the outside world of global communication.
Nomophobia—the fear of being without a smartphone—has become an increasing concern in the Asia-Pacific region, where mobile phone sales have skyrocketed. In fact, it is believed that in some areas, such as in South Korea, the average smartphone user spends more than four hours a day on a mobile device.
Another interesting aspect in the rise in mobile addiction is the fact that mobile users are basically wearing their phones as an extension of themselves. This could prove fortuitous for those looking to develop, test, and innovate the wearable tech industry. As wearable tech becomes more and more available to the masses, allowing users to stay connected at all times, mobile addiction might lead to a wearable tech addiction.
