Duopoly
The GSMA - which runs the Mobile World Congress show and is the trade body for mobile operators - has started a new monthly report looking at how UK mobile consumers engage with apps. It found that almost 8.8 million UK mobile punters used an app that connected to the web in April.
Within that figure there are some interesting trends. Despite the rapid growth of Android worldwide, it seems that we remain predominantly an iPhone country. Almost two thirds - 65 percent of those people accessed apps via iOS, with Android a distant second on 30 percent and the rest almost totally out of the picture.
There was some consolation for Google however; despite our preference for Apple, three out of the five most popular apps are made by Google: Maps, mobile search and YouTube. Here are the full tables.
|
Share (%) of Connected Application Users by Smartphone Operating System |
||
|
|
Total Unique Visitors |
% Share |
|
Total Connected Apps Users |
8,753,197 |
100% |
|
Apple iOS |
5,702,166 |
65% |
|
Google Android OS |
2,699,982 |
31% |
|
Symbian OS |
118,957 |
1% |
|
Other OS |
356,871 |
3% |
*A "connected" mobile app is an application that connects to a mobile operator's network.
|
Connected Mobile Applications |
|
|
Mobile App |
Total Unique Visitors |
|
Total Connected Apps Users |
8,753,197 |
|
Google Maps |
6,419,503 |
|
Yahoo! Weather |
3,567,047 |
|
|
3,456,442 |
|
Google Mobile |
2,554,329 |
|
YouTube |
2,438,348 |
|
eBay |
1,195,496 |
|
Sky Sports Live Football Score Centre |
1,004,085 |
|
Yahoo! Stocks |
959,289 |
|
WhatsApp Messenger |
798,656 |
|
Sky News |
732,374 |
|
Skype |
609,091 |
|
Shazam |
562,410 |
|
BBC News |
495,394 |
|
Sky Sports |
482,130 |
|
Talking Tom Cat |
452,396 |
|
Sky+ |
303,275 |
|
Rightmove App |
289,221 |
|
Google Earth |
269,502 |
|
IMDb Movies & TV |
251,624 |
|
TuneIn Radio |
227,343 |
Nielsen has also published a bit of research to do with apps, but focusing on US Android-users. It turns out that only 15 percent of the time they spend on their smartphones involves phoning, while more than half of that time is spent mucking about with apps - and that doesn't even include email and web-browsing.
