Advertisers take note: People who have phones with Android operating systems are more likely to open an advertisement inside an app than are iPhone users. That, at least, is what the Nielsen Company says in a new report that it released on Monday about how people use mobile apps.
The report is the result of the company’s Mobile Apps Playbook survey of 4,000 people, which Nielsen embarked upon last December. It opens with a dose of realism, saying that “most Americans can’t imagine leaving home without their mobile phones,” and pointing out that one in four of the respondents own a smartphone that is “more powerful than the computers initially used to send men to the moon.”
What did the respondents do with these phones? Download a lot of apps. As of June 2010, according to the report, 59 percent of the smartphone owners surveyed, and nearly 9 percent of the feature phone users, said they had downloaded a mobile app in the last month.
The respondents also are playing a lot of games. The report states that 61 percent of smartphone owners surveyed said they had bought and used a game within the past month.
They’re checking the weather, too. After games, the second most-used category of apps on the mobile phone were weather related, with 55 percent of phone owners surveyed using such applications, the report said. The smartphone owners surveyed also like mapping and navigation apps, social networking programs that access Facebook and Twitter, and music-related apps, according to Nielsen.
The respondents in the survey rarely download instant messenger apps and those used to make Internet voice over phone calls, the report found.
When comparing the different applications based on the type of phone used, the results were almost uniform across platforms.
Facebook, The Weather Channel, Google Maps and the music service Pandora were in the top five apps used on the iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Windows Mobile platforms.
In a blog post on the company’s Web site, Nielsen said, “One of the main challenges facing apps publishers is making sure consumers discover their apps.” And so Nielsen asked the phone owners how they discover and find new apps.
According to the researchers, 40 percent of those surveyed said they found new programs directly on their phones, while 36 percent said they heard about new apps from friends and family.
In addition to the finding about how Android and iPhone users treated advertisements on their phones, the report found that teenagers were “much more receptive than their elders” in engaging with mobile advertising inside an app, with 58 percent of teenagers telling the Nielsen researchers that they look at mobile ads.
