ComScore: US smartphone penetration reaches 77% in July 2015, Facebook Messenger displaces YouTube as second most popular app
Comscore: Smartphone Penetration Above 77 Percent In US — Facebook Messenger now the second most popular app, displacing YouTube.
Context & Ripple Effects
By mid-2015 the US smartphone base is close to saturated — ComScore puts penetration at [[a:874193|77% in July, a figure that within a year coincided with apps absorbing half of all time US users spend online]]. The interesting movement is therefore no longer device adoption but rank order inside the app hierarchy.
Facebook Messenger taking the #2 spot from YouTube is one step in a run the trackers kept confirming: Nielsen named it the fastest-growing app of 2015, then had it up 28% YoY to 129M uniques for 2016, still behind Facebook itself but widening its lead over YouTube.
First-order effects
- Facebook ends July holding both the #1 and #2 apps by audience, giving its ad business a reach story across two properties while YouTube drops to third in ComScore's monthly-uniques ranking.
- Media planners using ComScore's app rankings as a buying signal now see Messenger as a must-consider channel rather than a utility add-on to the main Facebook app.
Second-order effects
- YouTube loses the default 'second screen after Facebook' position in cross-platform pitch decks, pressuring it to argue engagement depth instead of raw reach — a case later traffic data supported when YouTube accounted for far more mobile bandwidth than Facebook.
- Rival messaging apps and carriers face a steeper climb: as Messenger compounds double-digit growth on top of Facebook's installed base, standalone messaging challengers compete against an app that ships pre-installed on the dominant platform.
Third-order effects
- With penetration near saturation, competition shifts from acquiring smartphone users to owning multiple high-frequency apps per user — a structure that favors companies able to run several top-five properties and squeezes single-app publishers.
- If Messenger-class utilities keep converting communication habits into logged-in daily sessions, messaging becomes the second pillar of the mobile attention economy alongside social feeds, reshaping how publishers and advertisers reach users who never open a browser.
The trend: A maturing US smartphone market is turning into an engagement contest among a handful of mega-apps, where ranking gains in messaging matter more than new-device growth.