Research: Samsung apps use lags behind Google apps

The apps and ecosystem that Samsung has developed for its Android phones from the Galaxy series are hardly used, according to research. Galaxy owners would spend a lot more time within the Google apps.

That’s what analysts at Strategy Analytics say. Using its AppOptix app and an underlying consumer panel, they mapped the mobile use of Samsung Galaxy S3 and S4 owners. In addition, AppOptix measured how many minutes a user uses a certain app every month.

The figures show that the various apps from Samsung are hardly used. For example, users spend an average of 6 seconds per month on ChatOn, a chat application with similar functionality to WhatsApp. Samsung Link and Group Play, which are often pre-installed on Galaxy mobiles by Samsung, also score very poorly, while the software store Samsung Apps also hardly seems to catch on. The apps S Memo and S Voice do slightly better, with owners of a Galaxy S4 using the Samsung apps slightly more on average.

Google, which has its apps on almost all Android phones, scores significantly better. For example, up to almost 3.5 hours are spent on YouTube each month and the Google Play Store can also interest users for an average of one hour per month. Google Search is good for about half an hour.

On average, a Galaxy owner spends just 0.6 minutes on the apps on Samsung’s Android platform, compared to just over an hour on the various Google apps that were studied. The researchers therefore conclude that Samsung does not seem to be able to lure Galaxy users to its own ecosystem, despite the standard presence of its software on its popular Galaxy mobiles.