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Nielsen asks "Which are your favorite smartphone apps?"

A Nielsen survey found that Facebook, Google Maps and the Weather Channel are the most popular smartphone apps - and came back with a few other interesting tidbits.
Written by Sam Diaz, Inactive

What are we doing with our smartphones if we're not chatting away? Well, depending on the model of the phone, we're probably spending time on Facebook, listening to music or getting somewhere with the help of Google Maps.

Nielsen, in its State of Mobile Apps survey, found that games were the most downloaded apps- both free and paid - across the iPhone, Android and Blackberry mobile platforms - and others. After that, Facebook, Google Maps and the Weather Channel were the most popular apps across smartphones.

What struck me as interesting was how Google Maps was more popular - significantly more popular - than Facebook on Android while Facebook towered over Google Maps on iPhone and Blackberry, as well as iPod music on the iPhone. What gives?

As an Android user, I am impressed with the navigation feature built into Maps on Android and also do many of my searches out of Maps, instead of Google's home page, especially when I'm looking for a gas station or ATM machine in another part of town.

Finally, I was also struck by the presence of Pandora as a top app on each platform. Pandora is a datahog on the mobile networks and its popularity allows some speculation about the popularity of unlimited data plans. It also struck me that the lure of the iPhone is supposed to be the iPod music piece of the puzzle being integrated with the iPhone. But with Pandora right up there in the iPhone's Top 5 shows that streaming is a big deal.

Makes me hope that Apple announces some sort of service at WWDC, tapping into the Lala.com acquisition to deliver it.

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