An interesting study out by St. Louis-based ad agency Moosylvania shows the top 10 mobile apps broken down by gender in the US, as well as indicating a preference for the mobile Web from those surveyed.
The study polled 7,000 respondents, split equally among men and women, with 99% of which being 18 years of age or older. Of those 7,000 respondents, 61% use a smartphone and 80% of the smartphone users use apps consistently. The study found that 30 apps were the norm per smartphone, but most mobile app users (85% men and 75% women) reported that they only use about 10 of them on a regular basis.
“Apps can be an incredible brand experience and provide an extraordinary level of connectivity with consumers,” said Norty Cohen, president and founder of Moosylvania. “But with 300,000 apps currently available, only a handful of mobile apps completely dominate leaving the rest fighting for an audience.”
The top 10 apps cited among the male respondents who use mobile apps were Google Maps (14%), followed by Facebook (13%), Pandora (6%), Weather (3.2%), ESPN (3.1%), Angry Birds (2.0%), Words With Friends (1.4%), Shazam (1.3%) and Yahoo (0.9%). Twitter and Yelp! tied for tenth place (0.8% each). For female respondents, the top 10 app picks were Facebook (27%), Google Maps (7%), Weather (5%), Pandora (4.5%), Twitter (2.9%), Google (2.5%), Words With Friends (2.4%), Shazam (1.4%) and Solitaire (1.1%). Bank of America and “Calendar” tied for tenth place (0.9% each).
Despite the seemingly endless hype over apps, the most interesting part of the study was the finding that almost half (48%) of the respondents said they used the mobile Web more than apps on their smartphones. For mobile marketers and advertisers, the question remains: Are mobile websites a viable and, in some cases, more cost-efficient option to consider?
