How’s this for interesting — Flurry is reporting that iPhone social gaming apps garner a larger audience than many prime-time TV shows, including the likes of Sunday Night Football, CBS’s Undercover Boss and NCIS Los Angeles.
In a blog post published today titled “Is iPhone the Next American Idol,” Flurry estimates iOS social gaming apps have a daily audience of 19 million viewers and are averaging more than 22 minutes per day, per user. The fact that these numbers alone represent a larger audience than many of the most popular TV shows combined is intriguing, but then there’s the fact that Flurry’s numbers are just from it’s network, representing only a small portion of the total audience.
Flurry’s network only represents a fraction of the larger picture, equaling roughly 25%. The network reaches around 50,000 apps — versus the 250,000 total apps present in Apple’s App Store. “Additionally, since this analysis focuses on only two categories of applications — social games and social networking apps — it’s clear that iOS devices are already ahead of prime time television’s hottest shows,” Flurry’s Peter Farago says in his post.
“Given that the app store only launched in July 2008, these figures are staggering,” he said. “Mass consumption of applications on mobile devices has exploded in record time. Also noteworthy is that the enormous audience these applications reach takes place every day, 365 days a year. Compared to a top television series, which airs 22 episodes a season, advertisers can reach a larger consumer audience through applications 15 times more frequently.”