Report: Savings of $12K Per Year for Smartphones App Users

Report: Savings of $12K Per Year for Smartphones App Users

By Andrew Burger

The 97% of U.S. smartphone owners who make use of mobile apps are saving lots of time, and that translates into saving lots of money, according to an online survey conducted by Harris Interactive for ClickSoftware.

U.S. smartphone owners who use mobile apps save up to 88 minutes per day, as much as 22 days’ worth of free time per year, according to reported survey results. That could yield as much as $12,000 in savings as compared to the average $174 smartphone owner surveyed paid for their devices, according to a press release.

“This survey calculates a concrete value of the benefits that mobility brings to everyday life and it is apparent that the smartphone-toting masses are, in reality, carrying quite a high ticket item, far more valuable than the price they paid to purchase the device,” commented Click Software’s vice president of mobility Gil Bouhnick.

“Beyond being a five-figure personal accessory, the smartphone can afford its owner, on average, more than 500 hours per year in savings accrued by using popular apps like email, text and GPS as tallied from our survey data,” he added.

Highlights of the survey and report include:

• Email, text and social networking apps lead the pack for frequency of use, followed by games and web browsing, with weather, GPS and calendar apps also making it onto the leaderboard

• Men (17 percent) are more likely than women (10 percent) to identify GPS apps as one of the three types of apps they use most often. More than half (59 percent) of people who use GPS (either most, second-most or third-most) consider themselves to be extremely or very productive when using GPS and 72 percent say GPS saves them up to 30 minutes per day, versus completing the same task without the app, for instance, using a paper map

• After selecting the top three types of apps they use most frequently, the smartphone owners who use apps collectively attribute a total savings of as much as 88 minutes per day to app use—up to 10 hours per week or 535 hours (22 days) per year—as opposed to functioning without the use of those smartphone apps

• According to Social Security Administration data, the average U.S. annual wage is $45,790, which makes the average cost of an hour of an American worker’s time $22 based on a typical 40 hour work week. Multiply that by the up to 535 hours per year in time savings simply realized from smartphone owners’ use of their top three apps and the true value of the smartphone emerges at approximately $12,000 ($11,777) for just one year of use

• Email and GPS seem to be the apps with the most balanced split between work and personal use by employed smartphone users, with about one in five saying they use these for mostly work use, and one third saying they use them equally for both work and personal use. One in five email app users designate their productivity level as extremely productive when using mobile email on their smartphone

• People ages 35+ are far more likely to list weather apps among their top three most-often used, while the younger 18-34 crowd plays on social networking sites with more frequency. Interestingly, 79 percent of smartphone owners say they save up to an hour per day by using weather apps, perhaps to avoid running late after ransacking the house for that lost umbrella or sitting in weather-related traffic delays

• While smartphone owners report feeling productive when they use apps on their phones, the survey also reveals a majority (82 percent) feel they are probably not using all the features and apps on their smartphones to the fullest. And 77 percent of them feel it is important to be able to access their information from multiple devices (e.g. smartphone, laptop and tablet)

“Given the world’s massive immersion in mobile computing, it has been an eye-opening exercise to measure a facet of its influence on modern America, and certainly, specific professions that rely on mobility to support job performance have the potential to derive an even higher dollar figure than $12K,” Bouhnick added.

“As powerful as our survey results prove the smartphone to be, the exciting reality is today’s mobile technology innovation has only scratched the surface of its potential to propel success, both in personal life and in business.

“The trend of ‘consumerization of IT’ is sure to make workers demand this productivity in their workplace. As the lines continue to blur between work and non-work mobile device use, organizations will seek out cost-effective solutions that empower their mobile workforce and enhance their bottom line while supporting complete workflows required in the enterprise market.”