Types Of News For Which Mobile Users Prefer A Browser vs An App, August 2015 [CHART]

For some activities, mobile users have a clear preference about app vs. browser usage. For example, according to August 2015 Millward Brown Digital polling, US smartphone owners typically lean on apps for online banking activities, but turn to browsers to research cars and trucks.

For news consumption, however, mobile preferences are not so clear-cut. Across a range of news topics, Millward Brown found, nearly equal shares of smartphone owners say they mostly access content via app vs. via browser.

For example, 36% of respondents said they mostly used apps to read entertainment news. But 37% said they mostly used a browser. For human interest stories, 36% turned to apps and 38% to mobile browsers. And for science or technology news, the breakdowns were identical, at 38% each.

In a few areas, there was a clearer tilt toward apps. Forty percent of smartphone owners mostly used apps to read business news, vs. 32% who mostly used a browser. Similarly, 42% of smartphone owners focused on apps for sports news, 10 points ahead of the 32% who preferred browsers. In both cases, however, one-quarter of respondents or more were ambivalent about how they accessed news content on mobile devices. Read the rest at eMarketer.