Wednesday, 13 July 2016

People are spending more time in 'Pokèmon Go' than Facebook and Snapchat

Nintendo's seemingly unstoppable mobile hit has reached a new milestone.

iPhone users may be spending more time playing Pokèmon Go than they do browsing Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter or Instagram, according to a new report.

The numbers, from app analytics company Sensor Tower, show that iPhone users spent more time usingPokèmon Go than the leading social media apps. Players spent, on average, just over 33 minutes playing the game, compared to 22 minutes on Facebook and 18 minutes on Snapchat, according to Sensor Tower's research.

Those may sound like some pretty staggering numbers, but there are few important caveats to these stats. First, Sensor Tower only looked at usage on a single day: Monday, June 11, just days after Pokèmon Go's official release.

Furthermore, the amount of time spent is less remarkable — though still relatively high — when you compare Pokèmon Go'susage to other popular mobile games. King's mega-hit Candy Crush, for example, averages about 43 minutes a day, according to Sensor Tower, while Game of War players average close to two hours of gameplay a day.

And whether or not the app will be able to maintain its current position is another question entirely. (Some of us are still skeptical the game will amount to anything more than a fad.) Still, that Nintendo's nostalgia-inducing app was able to beat out the top social media apps so handily just days after launch is a significant feat — one most app developers would envy.