Overall app use in 2013 rose by 115 per cent year-on-year in 2013, according to statistics from app analytics and marketing platform, Flurry. App use is defined by Flurry as a consumer launching an app and recording what Flurry defines as a session.

Every app category in Flurry’s rankings has shown growth over the last 12 months. The biggest increase was in Messaging & Social apps (including Photo-sharing), which posted a 203 per cent increase. Flurry notes that growth in this segment is no surprise, but the level of growth at triple 2012 levels, is.

Utilities & Productivity app use grew by 149 per cent, driven by increased usage of apps such as Evernote and Quip. Music, Media & Entertainment app usage grew by 78 per cent; Lifestyle & Shopping by 77 per cent; Games by 66 per cent; Sport, Health & Fitness by 49 per cent (expect a bigger increase than that this time next year – Ed); and News & Magazine apps by 31 per cent.

While social and messaging apps, such as Japan-based LINE, area enjoying great revenue growth, Flurry notes that there is still a debate about whether these apps are simply experiences or more of a platform. 2013, it says, saw a few examples of these apps becoming more of the latter. In March 2013, just three months after launching its game distribution platform, LINE announced that it had delivered over 100m downloads to its gaming partners.

Tencent’s WeChat has also conducted an experiment with China’s emerging device manufacturer Xiaomi demonstrating WeChat’s potential as an mCommerce player. In that experiment, Xiaomi launched a new smartphone to WeChat users, resulting in 150,000 new smartphones being sold in under 10 minutes through the messaging application. Such examples, says Flurry, coupled with Facebook’s own successful entry into the paid mobile app install market, have demonstrated the potential that messaging and social applications have to become a mobile storefront for digital and physical goods.

2013 ended on a high for the app business. On 31 December at 11:59 pm, Flurry Analytics tracked a record 4.7bn app sessions in a single day, bringing up a total of 1.13 trillion sessions for the whole year (which possibly says something about the quality of New Year’s Eve TV programmes). It’s anyone’s guess what next year’s numbers will look like.