Analytics and statisics agency comScore released its digital media metrics for May 2016 today, and the results are pretty clear: we have a mobile duopoly in America. An astonishing eight out of the top eight apps by reach are owned by one of those two companies.
As you would expect, Facebook's top are all around communication, social, and sharing, while Google's are almost all utilities for digital life: search, maps, and email. Google does have YouTube, however, and of course its app store, Google Play, where the most commonly downloaded apps are games.
While Google owns five of the top eight, none of them have the reach that Facebook's flagship app does at almost 80% penetration among smartphone owners over the age of 18. Nor do any of its apps -- with the possible exception of YouTube -- approach its level of deep engagement: more than 50 minutes a day, Facebook says. That's more than even the notoriously sticky Snapchat, where people often spend between 25 and 30 minutes each day.
Music apps Pandora and Apple Music also appear in the top 15, according to comScore. The fact that Apple Music is even on the list despite only being available on Apple's iPhones, which hold about 40% market share in the U.S., is impressive.
In yet another sign of the fact that Yahoo's sun has set, only one of its apps shows up on the top 15: Yahoo Stocks. Even that may simply be a remnant of the day when it was one of the first apps on the new iPhone.
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