82% of mobile media time is via Apps

Are you taking apps seriously in your marketing?

The big mobile manufacturer and software brands, like Apple, Google and Samsung, are adding more and more functionality to mobile phones. From games, to shopping, travel, social and even health. We also know that the by 2014 we're expecting more surf time to be on a mobile device (iPads included) than via desktops PC's.

comScore have pulled together analysis of mobile usage including a list of the top apps and there are some surprising observations. It is interesting that iPhone and Android users differ more than you might expect. The most important point is that apps are what take up most of the consumer's mobile minutes. 82% of our media time is spent with these mini-applications and it's only growing.

• Note Android with the most unique visitors, important to remember when planning marketing
• Search is more important to Android users
• As a percentage, more iPhone users are using the Facebook app and a lot more are using YouTube.
• Stocks and Music are hot with iPhone users while Android users go for Cooliris (an app that combines media with email and sharing) and they’re bigger fans of Angry Birds.
• From a social network perspective, Facebook has 3 times more minutes and 3 times the volume of users
• Finally, both Andriod and iPhone users have an interest with vocabulary with Words.

The interesting thing that there is no real trend. The analysis shows everything from simple tools to video, photos, games and social media. What's missing is shopping. If you combined mobile app and mobile browsing numbers. Then Amazon comes in fourth with 44,028 unique visitors for March. They were beaten only by Google, Facebook and Yahoo.

Apps are now coming more and more common-place, and you can only expect this to increase as the technologies stand. Can your brand create a tool that helps your mobile users do anything faster, better or simply make it more fun? If so, there's big opportunity.