Despite plenty, people barely use five apps: Study

Smartphone users spend over 85 percent of their time using native applications, but most of their time is spent using just five non-native apps they have installed from the App Store, a new study reveals.

Those five apps may vary from person to person.

The new data on app usage comes from a Forrester Research study that analysed 2,000 US smartphone owners to better determine how users engage with the apps they have on their phones, TechCrunch reported.

According to the findings, communication and social apps account for the most usage - with a combined 21 percent of all smartphone minutes.

This trend also means that only a handful of companies are now dominating app usage. Facebook accounts for 13 percent of the time spent on apps, followed closely by Google at 12 percent.

Other big-name tech companies also see heavy usage, including Amazon (three percent), Apple (three percent), Yahoo (two percent), Microsoft (one percent) and eBay (one percent.)

As a category, social networks claim 14 percent of all smartphone usage, with Facebook leading the category.

US users spend 4.8 percent of their smartphone minutes in instant messaging apps like WhatsApp, but globally, this figure is even higher.

Games and music account for six percent of smartphone usage minutes, while streaming video represents nine percent of minutes.

Here, YouTube leads with 43 percent adoption, but Netflix has the highest median use at 31 minutes, 33 seconds.

Media is another popular category of apps with weather, news and sports accounting for three percent of all usage minutes. News leads here with a median of 11 minutes, 51 seconds per day.

Books and magazines represent two percent of smartphone usage minutes. Other categories like shopping (five percent), maps/navigation (six percent) and email (four percent) are also popular.

Forrester advises businesses to design their apps only for their best and most loyal or frequent customers - because those are the only one who will bother to download, configure and use the application regularly.