Facebook, Games Lead the Way for Mobile Apps

According to the latest stats from Nielsen, mobile applications in the games category are the most popular for both smart-phone and feature-phone users, while Facebook is the most used app on two of the three major mobile operating systems.

Apps in the games category were the most downloaded overall in May, with 65 percent of smart-phone users and 59 percent of feature-phone users saying they used an app in this category within the past 30 days.

Music was second, with 46 percent of smart-phone users and 45 percent of feature-phone users saying they used those apps in the past month, followed by social networking (54 percent/36 percent), news/weather (56 percent, 32 percent) and maps/navigation/search (55 percent/30 percent.

Videos/Movies (25 percent/21 percent), entertainment/food (38 percent/21 percent), sports (30 percent/20 percent), communication (25 percent/15 percent), banking/finance (31 percent/15 percent), shopping retail (29 percent/14 percent), productivity (30 percent/12 percent) and travel/lifestyle (21 percent/11 percent) rounded out the list of application categories most used in May.

According to Nielsen, 58 percent of iPhone users utilized the Facebook app, followed by the iPod/iTunes app with 48 percent, Google Maps with 47 percent, Weather Channel with 46 percent and Pandora with 27 percent.

For BlackBerry users, 51 percent said they used the Facebook app, followed by 34 percent for Google Maps, 28 percent for Weather Channel, 19 percent for ESPN and 18 percent for Pandora.

For Android users, 67 percent used the Google Maps app, followed by 50 percent for Facebook, 38 percent for Weather Channel, 26 percent for Pandora and 26 percent for Google Search.

On all other smart-phone operating systems, Facebook led the way with 39 percent, followed by Google Maps with 33 percent, Weather Channel with 21 percent, Pandora with 20 percent and YouTube with 19 percent.

Nielsen notes that while Facebook is far and away the most popular social networking app, MySpace is popular among teens and LinkedIn is popular among adults 25-44.

The company also revealed that 21 percent of wireless subscribers in the U.S. had smart phones in the fourth quarter of 2009, up from 14 percent in the same quarter in 2008.

Overall, 14 percent of mobile subscribers have downloaded an app in the past 30 days, with smart-phone users having an average of 22 apps and feature-phone users having an average of 10 apps.

BlackBerry users had an average of 10 apps, iPhone users had an average of 37, Android users had an average of 22, Palm users had an average of 14 and Windows Mobile users had an average of 13.

Source:

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/the-state-of-mobile-apps/