Desktop computers, laptops, notebooks, all-in-one computers; mobile tablets, smartphones, multimedia players, even in-car infotainment centers -- regardless of the device, there's an app for that.
Apps are available in an inexhaustible supply -- over 2 million and counting -- for Apple, Android, BlackBerry and other lesser platforms.
Apps go on forever, even considering that the numbers are swelled by platform-specific versions of the same app.
For all the apps out there, it's still a very small percentage of them that get downloaded, and an even smaller subset of apps that are both downloaded and frequently used.
Most newcomers to smartphones and tablets tend to start off app-happy, downloading by the bushel. Familiarity sets in, and a pattern of usage revolves around a trusted few, with the eye candy appeal of the others just relegated to a pretty icon on a screen. At some point storage space on a device becomes an issue, limiting the once insatiable app-etite for downloading and bringing forth the need to toss some apps overboard. There seems to be a lot of app fatigue setting in.
What apps do we favor the most, and how often do we use the apps on our devices? A new study from comScore, an Internet technology company that measures activity in the digital world, tells us straight up that Facebook is the single most popular app on mobile devices, with over 115 million unique visitors monthly. Rounding out the next nine, there's YouTube at 83 million, Google Play, Google Search, Pandora Radio, Google Maps, Gmail, Instagram, Apple Maps and Yahoo Stocks, which draws over 42 million visitors.
Some minor surprises -- Twitter coming in at only fourteenth, eBay at twenty-first, Amazon at nineteenth.
Google may not have invented the Internet but it does own five of the top 10 apps. It is probably not coincidental that the Google Play app download store is third on this list, since Android is predominant on almost 85 percent of mobile devices worldwide.
Pandora is, by the numbers, the world's largest radio station. No wonder Google and Apple are targeting Pandora's perch through a combination of acquisitions and OS-integrated radio services.
Gmail is an approach-avoidance conflict for many users, since its behavior differs from other email clients, especially on iOS devices, and the service has a reputation of being particularly privacy-problematic. But Gmail benefits from its easy inter-connection with Google Drive and other Google apps, especially on Android devices.
It's a bit of a mystery how Apple Maps made the top 10, given its sullied reputation dating back to its disastrous revamp in iOS 6 -- an effort that went so off the tracks that Apple actually recommended that its users switch to Google Maps.
One statistic that especially supports the reliance device users place on apps -- according to the report, users spend more time (52 percent) with apps than with websites, a figure that is up from 40 percent in 2013.
