Facebook Most Used Mobile App, Google App 10th

Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) has released US-based survey data about most frequently used mobile apps and top app publishers. Consistent with comScore data, CIRP found that Facebook was the leading and most frequently used mobile app.

The firm asked mobile users to identify their “three most frequently used [mobile phone] apps.” Facebook had four times the usage of the next app on the list, which was Twitter. That Twitter ranked so highly is something of a surprise, as are the relatively low rankings of Google (search) and Google Maps.

An important caveat: these data speak to frequency, not reach. However comScore and Nielsen have both crowned Facebook the top mobile app overall. Google and Google Maps are likely on more handsets than Twitter. However the latter is used more often, as are Gmail and Chrome.

Below are the “top app producers,” based on this usage-frequency analysis, with the most “significant presence” on US smartphones.

One of the obvious things these survey data confirm is that search is much less often or regularly used on smartphones than on the PC. Recent Forrester survey data say that “89 percent of US online adults have used a search engine on their mobile device.” There’s no dispute that Google’s mobile search reach is great — frequency is the problem.