Most adults in the U.S. now have cellphones and one in four is using smartphone. With their rich features and capabilities, these devices are driving the mobile app economy. As of June 2010, 59% of smartphone owners and nearly 9% of feature phone owners report having downloaded a mobile app in the last 30 days.
To better understand the growing popularity of mobile apps, The Nielsen Company launched the Mobile Apps Playbook in December 2009 covering more than 4,000 mobile subscribers.
The respondents also are playing a lot of games. The report states that 61 percent of smartphone owners surveyed said they had bought and used a game within the past month.
After games, the second most-used category of apps on the mobile phone were weather related, with 55 percent of phone owners surveyed using such applications, the report said. The smartphone owners surveyed also like mapping and navigation apps, social networking programs that access Facebook and Twitter, and music-related apps, according to Nielsen.
The respondents in the survey rarely download instant messenger apps and those used to make Internet voice over phone calls, the report found.
When comparing the different applications based on the type of phone used, the results were almost uniform across platforms.
Facebook, The Weather Channel, Google Maps and the music service Pandora were in the top five apps used on the iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Windows Mobile platforms.
One of the main challenges facing apps publishers is making sure consumers “discover” their apps. According to Nielsen’s survey, searching application stores on their phones is the preferred way for discovering new apps. According to the researchers, 40 percent of those surveyed said they found new programs directly on their phones, while 36 percent said they heard about new apps from friends and family.
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