Average smartphone owner has 27 apps

It’s an app world after all. Mobile users are getting more app-hungry every day, and a new report from Nielsen shows just how important apps are to the mobile landscape.

Nielsen surveyed more than 4,000 smartphone owners and found that the average user has downloaded 27 apps. That’s compared to 22 last December, when Nielsen last performed the survey.

As expected, iPhone owners were the most active in app downloads. The average iPhone owner has downloaded a staggering 40 apps. Android users had an average of 25 apps, while Blackberry owners were most likely to only have around 14 apps. Those are all increases across the board.

Owners of Apple’s iPod Touch actually downloaded even more apps than iPhone owners. That’s probably because every single person who buys an iPod Touch is doing so for the apps. That may not be the case with the iPhone.

The most popular apps were games, which are extremely more prevalent on the iPhone than any other platform, however it was a very popular category for every mobile operating system. Social networking, weather, and map apps also pulled in very high download numbers.

The most frequently downloaded mobile app of all time is Facebook. Yeah, the social networking site won’t be put to rest until it has dominance in every possible consumer electronic segment.