Soluto’s Monthly Insights Report May 2013
Windows 8 Metro Apps Usage
Windows 8 Metro Apps Usage
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Many small businesses face the question of whether to upgrade to Windows 8, and whether to buy the
next PC with Windows 8 or Windows 7. IT service providers face the same dilemma when making
purchasing recommendations to their clients.
There are several advantages to Windows 8:
By far, the most common set of questions we hear from our users relate to Metro apps (aka “Modern apps”). Do people really use Metro apps? Which ones? Are Metro apps used more commonly on laptops with a touch screen vs. no touch screen? Etc...
We decided to dedicate this month’s report to answering these questions. We believe this information is useful in helping to make purchasing decisions, as well as educating co-workers and customers who wonder about Windows 8.
Our analysis included 10,848 Windows 8 machines, and was based on 313,142 Metro app launches across 9,634 unique Metro apps. The full methodology of creating this report is described below.
There are several advantages to Windows 8:
- A wide choice of models and form factors
- The new world of touch-enabled Windows
- Metro apps and the Windows store
- Additional benefits advertised by Microsoft
By far, the most common set of questions we hear from our users relate to Metro apps (aka “Modern apps”). Do people really use Metro apps? Which ones? Are Metro apps used more commonly on laptops with a touch screen vs. no touch screen? Etc...
We decided to dedicate this month’s report to answering these questions. We believe this information is useful in helping to make purchasing decisions, as well as educating co-workers and customers who wonder about Windows 8.
Our analysis included 10,848 Windows 8 machines, and was based on 313,142 Metro app launches across 9,634 unique Metro apps. The full methodology of creating this report is described below.
Previous report:
April 2013
PC Purchasing Guide
PC Purchasing Guide
To put this number into context, we looked at the percent of people who launch a Metro app less than once a day (i.e. less than 7 Metro app launches per week). We found that among desktop and laptop users, 60% of users launch a Metro app less than once a day. This number significantly improves with tablets, but still 44% of Windows 8 tablet users launch a Metro app less than once a day.
If you look at the Metro apps tried by users at least once, these are the top 20:
| App name | % who launched
at least once* |
Avg uses
per week** |
|
| 1 | Windows Communications Apps (Microsoft) | 85.84% | 4.40 |
| 2 | Windows Photos (Microsoft) | 43.87% | 1.59 |
| 3 | Microsoft Reader (Microsoft) | 27.11% | 1.27 |
| 4 | Microsoft Camera (Microsoft) | 13.19% | 0.61 |
| 5 | Bing Weather (Microsoft) | 8.50% | 0.70 |
| 6 | Zune Video (Microsoft) | 8.20% | 0.71 |
| 7 | Zune Music (Microsoft) | 8.07% | 0.70 |
| 8 | Netflix (Netflix) | 7.69% | 1.41 |
| 9 | Bing Maps (Microsoft) | 7.44% | 0.41 |
| 10 | SkyDrive (Microsoft) | 7.28% | 0.60 |
| 11 | Bing News (Microsoft) | 6.27% | 0.61 |
| 12 | Bing (Microsoft) | 6.18% | 0.71 |
| 13 | Xbox LIVE Games (Microsoft) | 5.59% | 0.44 |
| 14 | Google Search (Google) | 3.75% | 1.11 |
| 15 | - Games App - (WildTangent Games) | 3.39% | 0.37 |
| 16 | Shark Dash! (GAMELOFT SA) | 3.30% | 0.59 |
| 17 | Microsoft Solitaire Collection (Microsoft) | 3.17% | 2.13 |
| 18 | Amazon (Amazon.com) | 3.12% | 0.41 |
| 19 | Acer Explorer (Acer Incorporated) | 3.11% | 0.34 |
| 20 | Bing Sports (Microsoft) | 2.77% | 0.52 |
Soluto
May 2013The No1 app, called “Windows Communications Apps”, is actually an app container that represents the following apps: Mail, People, Messaging and Calendar.
The right column shows how often people use each app every week on average. The vast majority of these apps are used less than once a week.
The data shows that while most people try the Windows Communications Apps, on average they are used less than once a day. Note that launching ANY of the 4 apps (Mail, People, Messaging and Calendar) counts as a use. Therefore, the 4.4 uses per week (on average) of these Apps reflects the aggregated use of all 4 apps.
Across all form factors, these are the most engaging Metro apps:
| App name | Avg uses
per week** |
|
| 1 | Yahoo! Mail (Yahoo!) | 26.91 |
| 2 | Social Jogger (CyberLink) | 25.98 |
| 3 | Social Networks (CyberLink) | 21.19 |
| 4 | Lync MX (Microsoft) | 9.98 |
| 5 | Windows Communications Apps (Microsoft) | 4.40 |
| 6 | to-dos (gindasoft) | 3.21 |
| 7 | Microsoft Solitaire Collection (Microsoft) | 2.13 |
| 8 | Spider Solitaire HD (Bernardo Zamora) | 2.11 |
| 9 | Solitaire HD (Bernardo Zamora) | 1.87 |
| 10 | iHeartRadio (Clear Channel Management Services) | 1.68 |
| 11 | Windows Photos (Microsoft) | 1.59 |
| 12 | JewelFever (Sprakelsoft UG) | 1.55 |
| 13 | IM (SHAPE GmbH) | 1.54 |
| 14 | Microsoft Mahjong (Microsoft) | 1.45 |
| 15 | iStunt2 (Miniclip SA) | 1.43 |
Soluto
May 2013Yahoo! Mail is an extremely engaging app showing that Yahoo! Mail users 1) love Yahoo! Mail and 2) get along with the Metro interface.
At No2 and No3 come two Acer apps providing a social networking hub for the user, including access to Facebook and Twitter. Those two apps seem to be very highly engaging. Microsoft Lync at No4 finished the list of apps being used more than once a day on average.
Looking at this list it’s clear what types of apps dominate the engagement of users with the Metro interface: email, social networking, communication and games. When analyzing the most engaging apps across the different form factors, the same apps show up in the top 20-30, with small changes in places.
It’s especially interesting to note that Microsoft’s Mail app supports Yahoo! email as well, but people who install the dedicated Yahoo! Mail app are so much more engaged with it, and especially on desktops.
One explanation may be that Microsoft’s Mail app forces you to conform to the strict guidelines of the Metro interface, which in many cases just makes no sense from a user-experience perspective. The simplest example to explain this situation is the steps needed to add a Yahoo! account to your Microsoft Mail app. When you open the Mail app, you don’t have a visible way to add an account. On the bottom left there’s a message in the spirit of “To add an account, go to Settings and click Accounts”. But there’s no “Settings” anywhere to be found. If you “get” Windows 8, you know that you’re supposed to take your mouse to the top-right corner, wait for semi-transparent “charms” to appear, then carefully slide your mouse down (if you tilt it to the left the charms will disappear!), only then the word “Settings” appears - you can click it and then find the desired “Accounts”. For an average person, this is like crossing the desert. It’s worth noting that if you paid attention while installing Windows 8, you would have seen an explanation for the generic way of how to reach Settings from anywhere - but most people don’t install their own operating system, and if they do, it’s common knowledge that people don’t read anything in front of them - they just click Next Next... To make a long story short, an average chap opening Microsoft’s Mail app will have no idea how to add his Yahoo! mail. So he’ll download the Yahoo! Mail app instead and apparently enjoy it very much.
On the other hand, another consensus in the market is that if you don’t innovate, you die. Microsoft had to innovate, and time will tell if their big bet was good or bad.
In the meanwhile, if you or your customers are into awesome new devices and have money to spare, get a Yoga or Twist or a Duo or just a slick, thin and light ultrabook running Windows 8.
If you’re pragmatic about using the Windows operating system with a keyboard and mouse - there’s no rush. Wait and see what “Windows Blue” has in store for us before you upgrade.
We had data from the following form factors: desktops, laptops with no touch screen, laptops with touch screen, tablets and convertibles. Since convertibles accounted for less than 1% of the sample, we disregarded them in this analysis, leaving us with 10,848 Windows 8 devices.
We then verified that the sample contained enough representative data - we looked at the average time we had data from each device - it was 27.4 days per device on average. Desktops had the lowest average (26.8 days) and touch laptops had the highest average (34.3 days). This number is significantly lower than our normal average across the entire user base, but it’s understandable that popular models running Windows 8 are relatively new. Regardless, this report is based on over a month of data from over 10k PCs.
Per form factor, we looked at the launch events of Metro apps aggregated across the app IDs. We could then analyze, for each form factor, how many app launches it sees per day, how many people launch Metro apps less than once a day on average, etc.
We could also look at the Metro apps being launched by most unique users per form factor, and the average times each user launched every app.
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