Apple, Android phone users are heaviest app downloaders

iPhone owners have an average of 48 apps on their phones, and Android users, 35, making them the smartphone app kings, according to a new report from The Nielsen Company.

In contrast, BlackBerry users have an average of 15 apps on their phones.

This little stat — based on research of consumers who downloaded apps in the past 30 days, Nielsen says — does not surprise me. As both an iPhone and BlackBerry owner, I know which phone I prefer to have apps on and which one is easier to use: Hands down, it's the iPhone. It's simple, quick, seamless (generally), compared to the complicated, time-consuming and clunky way BlackBerry apps are downloaded and used.

That also jibes with what Nielsen found, that iPhone and Android users "use their apps more often: 68 percent of app downloaders with iPhones and 60 percent of those with Android phones reported using their mobile apps multiple times a day compared to 45 percent of app downloaders with Blackberry/RIM phones."

Palm owners came in third, with 21 apps on their phones, followed by Windows Mobile users, with 17.

Still, more of us are apparently getting comfortable with using apps in general. Last year, Nielsen said that the average number of apps on iPhones was 37; Android, 22; Palm, 14; Windows Mobile, 13; and BlackBerry, 10.

Nielsen released the updated figures at the AppNation conference in San Francisco, where mobile software developers and investors are meeting.

Consumers with either iPhones or Android phones "represent the majority of the smartphone market in the U.S. and 74 percent of mobile app downloaders," Nielsen said. So it makes sense that "If you want to understand the consumer landscape for mobile apps, you have to understand the Apple iOS and Google Android ecosystems."