10 Android apps account for 43pc of usage

The top 10 apps for Android mobile devices account for 43 per cent of usage, according to a new survey.

The typical user of a Google Android-powered smartphone spends 56 minutes a day using apps or on the mobile web, research from Nielsen Smartphone Analytics has found. Two-thirds of that time is spent using apps but Nielsen found that just a few apps are dominating.

The top 10 Android apps make up 43 per cent of time on mobile apps and the top 50 apps account for 61 per cent of time spent. Nielsen did not publish the names of the apps in question.

“With 250,000+ Android apps available at the time of this writing, that means the remaining 249,950+ apps have to compete for the remaining 39 percent of the pie,” Don Kellogg, director of telecom research and insights for Nielsen, wrote in a blog post.

Nielsen says that it has no immediate plans to follow up with details of users of Apple’s iOS platform but says that the Smartphone Analytics survey will track iOS users’ behaviour. The data for the survey is gathered using meters installed in “thousands of iOS and Android smartphones”, Nielsen says.

Earlier this week, Google bought Motorola Mobility, the mobile phone company that had manufactured several Android-powered handsets, in a move that was widely seen as an attempt to acquire ‘defensive’ patents to protect the Android operating system.