MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SOASTA® Inc., the leader in cloud and mobile testing, today announced the results of its recent survey showing which mobile apps are popular with smartphone owners in major American markets. SOASTA’s survey, conducted online in August by Harris Interactive, revealed wide spectrum of app interests among smartphone owners in the top 10 U.S. markets by population (roughly 200 per market), among whom 1,124 are smartphone owners : Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Boston, Washington D.C., and Philadelphia.
New Yorker smartphone owners led the way when it came to checking apps in the morning—92% used their smartphone to load a mobile app, followed closely by other east-coasters in Philadelphia (89%) and Boston (88%). Next were Atlanta (86%), Chicago (85%), San Francisco (83%), Houston (81%), and Washington D.C. and Dallas at 80%. Trailing all other major markets was Los Angeles with 75%.
Overall, smartphone owners in every market used a wide range of mobile apps. The apps most commonly checked first thing in the morning are:
- Email 67%
- Weather 45%
- Social Media 40%
- News 35%
- Financial News 12%
- Traffic 11%
- Shopping 11%
- Horoscope 6%
- Public Transit 5%
- Dating 3%
First thing in the morning email app usage was highest among smartphone users in New York (78%) and Boston (77%). Those in Boston were high in many categories, and led in checking apps for weather (59%), social media (52%) and news (52%). Smartphone-using San Franciscans were runners-up in social media (50%) and news (43%) app usage. Those markets where smartphone owners were least likely to use certain apps first thing in the morning included Los Angeles for social media (26%), Houston for weather (29%), and Dallas for news (25%). Those in Chicago were the most likely to check traffic apps (17%), just edging out those in Washington, D.C. (16%).
“It’s clear from our survey that checking mobile apps is becoming part of our daily lives,” said Tom Lounibos, CEO of SOASTA. “From managing their investment portfolios to checking the daily commute, smartphone owners are using apps to gather information and plan their activities wherever they go.”
Smartphone owners in New York were more than twice as likely to use shopping apps first thing in the morning (at 22%) than those in any other market except for Los Angeles (15%), which it still led by a considerable margin. Smartphone owners in New York also led in other categories, including public transit (11%) and dating (9%) apps, and were co-leaders with those in Los Angeles for financial news (15%) apps. Those in the Big Apple also seek signs foretelling their Future: horoscope apps were used by New Yorkers (14%) first thing in the morning at nearly twice the clip as users in runner-up Boston (8%).
About SOASTA
SOASTA is the leader in cloud testing. Its web and mobile test automation and monitoring solutions, CloudTest, TouchTest and mPulse, enable developers, QA professionals and IT operations teams to test and monitor users with unprecedented speed, scale, precision and visibility. The innovative product set streamlines test creation, automates provisioning and execution, and analyzes real user behavior in real-time to deliver actionable intelligence, faster. With SOASTA, companies have confidence that their applications will perform as designed, delivering quality user experiences every time. SOASTA’s customers are many of today’s most successful brands including Avaya, American Girl, Bonobos, Backcountry.com, Chegg, Experian, Gilt Groupe, Hallmark, Intuit, Microsoft and Netflix. SOASTA is privately held and headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. For more information about SOASTA, please visit www.soasta.com.
Harris Interactive Survey Methodology
The survey was conducted online within the United States between August 21 and 27, 2013 among 2,036 adults aged 18 and over (1,124 of whom are smartphone owners) in the top 10 U.S. markets (202 total/117 smartphone owners in Los Angeles, CA; 203/115 in San Francisco, CA; 204/137 in Dallas/Fort Worth, TX; 204/121 in Houston, TX; 202/108 in Atlanta, GA; 205/109 in Chicago, IL; 206/93 in the NYC Metro area, NY; 203/90 in Boston, MA; 203/121 in Washington, D.C. and 204/113 in Philadelphia, PA). This online survey is not based on a probability sample and therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated. For complete survey methodology, including weighting variables, please contact Deanna Siste at deanna.siste@grayling.com.
