Nielsen recently launched its 'App Playbook,' surveying more than
4,200 people who had downloaded an application in the past 30 days.
- 21% of American wireless subscribers have a smartphone at Q4 2009,
up from 19% in the previous quarter and significantly higher than the
14% at the end of 2008 - 14% of mobile subscribers have downloaded an app in the last 30 days
- Average number of apps: Smartphone: 22, Feature phone: 10
- BlackBerry: 10
- iPhone:37
- Android: 22
- Palm: 14
- Windows Mobile: 13
In regards to types of apps, games are the most downloaded - both free and paid. While Facebook, Google Maps and Weather Channel are the most popular apps
across smartphones
- iPhones: Facebook (58%), iTunes (48%), Google Maps (47%)
- Android: Google Maps (67%), Facebook (50%), Weather Channel (38%)
- Blackberry: Facebook (51%), Google Maps(34%), Weather Channel (28%)
For social networking Facebook clearly favorite app, but MySpace is
hugely popular among teens; LinkedIn attracts adults 25-44.
For News/weather, the Weather Channel was used by 58%; age distribution
across sites was similar, save for Time Mobile and Thomson Reuters.
For Shopping: Amazon and eBay lead (57% and 41%)
- Search/Map: skew male, particularly Instamapper (80/20)
- Video/Movie: skewed towards males; Imeem and Moviefone show a higher
proportion of young users - Music: iTunes, Pandora, Sirius XM appeal more to males, while Yahoo
Music almost evenly split (51/49)