The popularity of a smartphone app is heavily dependent on the operating system. A new study from comScore identified the top apps accessed by iOS and Android customers and found that the two audiences have very dissimilar usage characteristics.
The study, conducted in March among smartphone users age 18 and older, found that “system” apps topped the list for both iOS and Android. Among iOS customers, the iTunes store was the top-ranked app, used by virtually all (99.9%) customers. Among Android customers, the Android Market (Google Play) was the top app, used by 93.2 percent of Android customers.
Other leading apps used by iOS customers included Google (NASDAQ:GOOG [1]) Maps (91.2%), Facebook (80.0%), YouTube (78.2%), and Yahoo! Weather (70.3%).
| Top iPhone Apps | Unique Visitors (000) |
% Reach |
| Apple iTunes | 32644 | 99.9% |
| Google Maps | 29803 | 91.2% |
| 26148 | 80.0% | |
| YouTube | 25553 | 78.2% |
| Yahoo! Weather | 22965 | 70.3% |
| Yahoo! Stocks | 20765 | 63.6% |
| Pandora Radio | 10478 | 32.1% |
| The Weather Channel | 8817 | 27.0% |
| Temple Run | 7415 | 22.7% |
| Words With Friends Free | 6979 | 21.4% |
Other leading apps used by Android customers included Google Search (84.1%), Google Maps (74.5%), Gmail (71.4%), and Facebook (68.9%).
| Top Android Apps | Unique Visitors (000) | % Reach |
| Android Market | 49717 | 93.2% |
| Google Search | 44883 | 84.1% |
| Google Maps | 39775 | 74.5% |
| Gmail | 38108 | 71.4% |
| 36771 | 68.9% | |
| Cooliris | 28543 | 53.5% |
| YouTube | 24739 | 46.4% |
| Google News & Weather | 24134 | 45.2% |
| Angry Birds | 16171 | 30.3% |
| Words With Friends | 12511 | 23.4% |
Facebook was the only social app ranked in the top five on each platform.
via iOS and Android users have different taste in apps.
