Smartphone apps are really a rage these days but if a report by Nielsen presents true picture, developers of mobile apps will be a worried lot. According to the Nielsen report, few apps outside the top 50 get much user attention.
Nielsen analysed the data from on-device meters installed on thousands of Apple iOS and Android smartphones. (iOS data is not yet out), and the analyst found some very interesting patterns.
The average Android owner spends 56 minutes interacting with mobile applications and mobile websites every day. In that span of 56 minutes, about two-thirds of the time is spent on mobile applications, and one-third browsing the mobile Web.
Does that mean mobile web has a bleak future, well not really. This report is based on USA data, but in Indian and other developing market it is feature phones which dominate. As features phones do not support much of applications, it is the mobile web which takes precedence.
Nielsen says that the top 10 Android applications are responsible for 43 per cent of all the time spent by Android consumers on mobile apps. The top 50 apps account for 61 per cent of all time spent. That means that almost all the 2.5 lakh apps on the Android market see minimal use and vie for a pie of the remaining 39 minutes.
Current top 10 apps on Android are YouTube, Google Maps, Amazon Kindle, Facebook, Pandora, Angry Birds, Dragon Fly, Words with Friends, Advanced Task Killer, and Angry Birds Rio.
The top 10 paid apps are Cut the Rope, Beautiful Widgets, Fruit Ninja, PowerAMP Full, SwiftKey X, Robo Defense, ROM Manager, Doodle Jump, SoundHound, and ADW Launcher.
Amongst these apps, 40 per cent are games and the rest are utility apps and media and social networking apps. There are few business apps even in the top 50.
The report definitely points that applications have more potential than the mobile web. So the device manufacturers need to focus on adding better App support to their devices and operating system. Media planners will also have to revise their mobile advertising strategies.
What is good for the consumer is that with these findings out, we will get better phones with better application support and developers coming out with better apps and not just filling up the Android market (or any other app store) with just about any app.