If you’re wondering where Americans are spending time on their smartphones, media research firm Nielsen Holdings PLC has an answer for you.
Unfortunately, it would appear that Canadian marketers trying to reach American mobile users need to make it past the same unofficial gatekeepers as their online counterparts, with Nielsen recently discovering that eight of 2016’s top 10 mobile apps in the U.S. were owned by either Facebook Inc. or Google Inc.
For the third year in a row Facebook itself came out on top, with an average of more than 146 million unique users every month – a growth of 14 per cent over last year. Facebook Messenger came in second, with more than 129 million average unique monthly users, followed by YouTube, which welcomed an average of more than 113 million unique visitors each month.
When it came to mobile operating systems, the company found that Android and iOS dominated to the extent you would expect, with 53 per cent of American mobile subscribers using Android 45 per cent using iOS devices to access their apps. Meanwhile, two per cent of U.S. smartphone owners used a Windows phone, while another one per cent used a BlackBerry.
The number of Americans using smartphones grew last year too, from 86 per cent of the U.S. population in 2015 to 88 per cent at the end of September 2016.
To gather its data, Nielsen relied on both a 9000-user panel which voluntarily installed the company’s Electronic Mobile Measurement app onto their handsets, and a monthly survey of more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers aged 13 and older, with each mobile user asked to identify their primary handset by manufacturer and model.
Respondents were recruited online, in English, and included users with Hispanic, African-American, Asian-American, Native American, and Alaskan Native backgrounds.
You can find out more on Nielsen’s website.