New Survey Suggests iPad Game-Playing Isn't That Popular

A new Localytics survey concludes that most of us spend most of our time on the iPad reading news, listening to music, or accessing health and fitness apps. Surprisingly, game-playing is only the seventh most popular activity. To determine how we spend our iPad time, Localytics analyzed the average session length – “that is, the average time a user spends between opening an app and finishing and closing it – and compared it across categories.” Among the findings:

Getting a news app onto an iPad user’s device seems to generate extremely long interactions between app and user
iPad users appear to be playing short, more casual games, rather than in-depth time-consuming ones
Sports apps may be used more to check scores than to truly delve into sports stories and news
iPads and tablets appear to be very conducive to deeper, more information-packed experiences, such as reference and health apps
Sports and entertainment apps remain relatively poor at generating user engagement
Despite long user sessions, reference apps appear to be rarely used
The iPad’s reputation as a reading and gaming device appears well deserved

Still, gamers shouldn’t be entirely upset. While the amount of time used playing games on the iPad is small in comparison to other activities, game apps do receive the largest number of user interactions per month. This suggests that game-playing is popular, but not for long periods of times. For more information on the results of this survey, please visit the Localytics website.

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