Nielsen has released a new mobile application report and its findings showcase not only the increase in smartphone usage, but also what applications are most popular. For its report, Nielsen surveyed more than 4,200 people who had downloaded a mobile application in the last 30 days.
The survey really highlights just how much smartphone ownership trails traditional feature phone ownership, at least in the U.S. Nielsen’s study shows that 21% of American wireless subscribers have smartphones.
Still, even non-smartphone users have heavily embraced mobile apps. Nielsen’s survey indicates that the average number of apps that a feature phone user has on his or her device is 10, while the average number of apps a smartphone user has is 22.
Broken down even further, the average number of installed apps based on smartphone OS looks like this:
- BlackBerry: 10
- iPhone: 37
- Android (): 22
- Palm: 14
- Windows Mobile: 13
Most Popular Smartphone Apps
While the specific applications vary from platform to platform, the most popular apps across smartphones were pretty consistent in this report: Maps, weather, Facebook and music all had strong showings.
Check out this chart which breaks down the five most popular apps by smartphone OS:
It’s interesting to see just how much Facebook dominates the mobile app space; it’s one of the top five apps on each of the platforms highlighted. Still, Nielsen notes that broken down by demographic, MySpace () is still very popular among teens and that LinkedIn () is strong in the 25-44 demographic.
