Nielsen survey shows that Games are the most installed apps category

It seems that smartphone usage and Baseball have something in common. Both seem to be a statistician's delight with numbers divided up into so many different ways that it could make your head spin. Nielsen, the company famous for providing television ratings data, has been offering information on cell phone usage and has just released some figures about the apps that we download from online stores and markets.

Nielsen looked at those who had downloaded at least one app in a 30 day stretch of Q2 and found that 64% of them had downloaded at least one game in that period to lead the pack. A close second belonged to apps in the "Weather" category which were installed by 60% of smartphone users during the qualifying time period. Social Networking sites came in third with a 56% reading.

Game players are also the most willing to pay for an app with 93% saying that they whip out their wallet to pay for a game they want. The rest of the categories were bunched pretty tightly with "Entertainment" coming in second (87%), and "Maps/Navigation" and "Productivity" apps both coming in with 84% readings. Only 76% of those polled would pay for a "News" application.

In a very interesting breakdown of the numbers, iOS users spend an average of 14.7 hours per month on games compared with 9.3% of Android users and only 4.7% of those using a Windows Phone 7 smartphone. With its strong business-centric appeal, its no surprise that BlackBerry users averaged only 4.5 hours per month playing games, tying the platform with Featurephone users. The average monthly game use in the industry was 7.8 hours per month in the most recent survey.

source: Nielsen via BGR