Smartphone users love Facebook the most

Neilsen survey finds out what smartphone users are downloading

Newcomers to the smartphone world  may think that Apple invented the whole mobile app downloading thing, but it had in fact been going on for years – and thrives on other platforms too.

Of course when it comes to the sheer number of the apps available, Apple rules the roost with its store bulging with zillions of apps, but with smartphones predicted to overtake feature phones in the U.S. by 2011, it’s a burgeoning market on all platforms.

Wha’appening?

To find out wha’g’wan, research firm Nielsen recently launched its ‘App Playbook’ study, quizzing over 4,200 people who had downloaded an application in the past 30 days.

Here’s their key stats:

  • 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

Neilsen survey finds out what smartphone users are downloading

Facebook, weather and maps

Facebook was found to be the most used app on iPhones, Blackberrys and all other smartphones except the Android platform, where it was pushed into second place behind Google Maps.Perhaps Android users are too busy going places to be chatting on social networking sites?

Here’s a breakdown by platform.

Neilsen survey finds out what smartphone users are downloading

[Nielsen]

3 Comments on “Smartphone users love Facebook the most”

  1. It’s still a bit open to debate, but basically:

    “Generally, Smartphones are those which run on the third party operating systems like Windows Mobile, Android, Symbian operating systems. Blackberry and the iPhone also come into the same Smartphone category since they run on more than one OS. It is the same like the Mac operating system X runs on the Apple’s different computers…

    …On the other hand, Feature phones lie in between the basic phones and smartphones. They normally come with their own operating system. It is also essential to know that all the feature phones do not support third party software. If they do then they might be running on BREW or JAVA.

    http://blog.itechtalk.com/2010/feature-phones-vs-smartphones/

Comments are closed.