Our love of apps makes for record-breaking holiday for Apple

We love apps. Survey data from Nielson found that in the U.S., the average smartphone user accessed 26.7 apps per month. Men tend to use slightly more apps than women (27.2 vs 26.3 apps, respectively) but women spend more time each month using the apps (38 hours and 2 minutes per month vs 36 hours and 51 minutes.)

All of this has been good news for app makers and distributors. Apple says the popularity of apps helped make this holiday season the biggest ever for the App Store, setting new records between Christmas and New Year’s.

Take a look below to see how apps have been selling and how they’ve impacted economies.

In Canada, the Information and Communications Technology Council says that an estimated 64,100 jobs have been created in the app economy and expect that number to rise to 111,000 by 2019. Canadian apps enterprises generate about $1.7 billion in annual revenues. By 2019, that’s likely to reach $5.2 billion.