comScore Data Reveals App Popularity Shakeup
comScore recently released data for United States smartphone marketshare for September, and although the data has not changed significantly overall since July when comScore first started tracking this metric, the big surprise was the drop in the popularity of the Google Maps application.
At one point, Google Maps was more popular than any other smartphone app in existence, but after hitting #5 in July, the app sits in the #8 position behind things like Pandora Radio and the Apple App Suite. Read on for full rankings.
Facebook App Leads by a Mile
According to the latest comScore data, the top smartphone apps and the percentage of smartphone users that have them looks like this:
- Facebook – 74.3%
- Google Play – 53.9%
- Google Search – 53.2%
- YouTube – 49.6%
- Pandora Radio – 49.3%
- Gmail – 44.9%
- Apple App Suite – 44.2%
- Google Maps – 43.0%
- Yahoo! Stocks – 30.9%
- Instagram – 25.9%
- Apple Maps – 25.6%
- Yahoo! Weather – 24.4%
- Weather Channel – 21.9%
- Twitter – 21.1%
- Facebook Messenger – 18%
Android Still on Top, Apple Gaining Ground
As far as the popularity of smartphone brands themselves, Android remains on top by a wide margin while Apple is steadily gaining ground. The figures for September, as well as change since June, are below:
- Android – 51.8%, down 0.2%
- Apple – 40.6%, up 0.7%
- BlackBerry – 3.8%, down 0.6%
- Microsoft – 3.3%, up 0.2%
- Symbian – 0.3%, no change
The rise in popularity of iOS and the slight decline in Android’s popularity may have something to do with the reduced reach for Google Maps, though it wouldn’t explain why Google Play, Search and YouTube are still so highly ranked. It will certainly be interesting to see how the numbers shake out throughout the holidays.
