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Facebook for Android more popular than most of Google’s apps

By: , IntoMobile
Monday, December 12th, 2011 at 8:55 AM
Android-nielsenapps

Nielsen just released some stats on Android app usage over a single month, and you might be surprised to hear that though Google apps dominate the top 10, one outside app has manage to wedge itself into the number two spot. After the Android Market (which is an understandable first destination for smartphone owners),  the app most likely to be used over the course of 30 days was Facebook. The trend was consistent across three age brackets, ranging from 18 to 44, with Gmail, Google Search, Google Maps and YouTube following up close behind. As you can see from the chart above, the gap between Facebook and the others isn’t huge, but the fact that it can compete with such core applications is a testament to the social network’s future in mobile.

HTC had partnered up with Facebook to create the Status not long ago, and though it was an entry-level device that hadn’t garnered much interest among those interested in upper-tier devices, studies like this show that the concept wasn’t flawed in the slightest, and I would be surprised if we didn’t see another Facebook-branded Android device again sometime in the near future. Of course, Google and Facebook don’t particularly get along, and now with Google Plus in the picture, the two are in direct competition.

In the long run, it would be interesting to see if Facebook could recreate this level of app loyalty in other platforms, like the new BlackBerry 10 OS, or Windows Phone. Android owners, does this graph reflect your monthly app usage? Is Facebook that high up on your list?

[via]

About The Author

Simon Sage

Simon Sage’s education largely surrounded writing, technology and online community, leading him to begin his blogging career at www.BlackBerryCool.com and to quickly discover a vibrant and active community surrounding BlackBerry and mobile technology. In exploring RIM’s platform, he has learned what enterprises are looking for in mobility as well as what makes the innocuous BlackBerry so appealing to them. Recently Simon’s been covering RIM’s gradual move into an already-crowded consumer market, and the impact of burgeoning challengers, such as the iPhone, as well as long-time leaders, like Nokia, on BlackBerry’s advancement. With plenty of content under his belt, Simon will be branching off a bit to see what other smartphone manufacturers are working on while still using BlackBerry as a barometer. At IntoMobile, you can count on his posts being even-handed, well-informed and thought-out.

  • http://my.opera.com/rafaelluik Rafael

    Not really surprisingly…
    A simple example: to have a Facebook account you need to have an e-mail address. The e-mail address can be Yahoo! Mail, GMail, Hotmail (and many others). With this simple example you can see that GMail is loosely 1/3 in relation to Facebook total number of users.

    But the data reported by Nielsen shows Google has done a good job on making their apps available on Android by default, thus dominating the platform while their main competitors (Y! Mail / Hotmail – which have more users than GMail) are down on the chart or inexistent.