By Dave Sniadak
With more than 10-billion apps downloaded since, well, the start of the business of downloading apps, it's time we all take a look at our phones and purge those apps that haven't been touched in a while.
The Nielsen Research Company recently posted findings from their first mobile media rankings for Android usage. Their findings are based solely on what Nielsen is calling apps that have 'active reach' - or the percentage of Android users who've used the apps in the past 30 days - from U.S.-based smart phone users ages 18 and up. The findings are interesting, if not telling about how men and women use their smart phones differently.
Nielsen's list of the overall Top 20 apps shouldn't surprise anyone - Market, Google Maps, Gmail, Facebook and Google Search are the first five - and the report supplements the list by breaking it out by gender. Apps like QuickOfficePro, Talk - Text to Voice and Adobe Reader imply that men might use their smart phones for work. Apps like Facebook, Words With Friends and Angry Birds tend to populate women's phones more than men, leading observers to believe female smart phone usage could be more on the playful side.
The biggest takeaway is that while millions of mobile users around the country may use their phones for a multitude of unique reasons, they're all dialed into smart phones for much more than just talking.
