A new study has been issued from Comscore, and it reports that the vast majority of most-used mobile apps in the States come from Google and Apple. In fact, the study says that those apps are pre-installed, and the study certainly shows that Google and Apple dominate the competition with their default apps.
This study was commissioned by Facebook, and it was shared by The Verge, exclusively. The report says that basic apps such as weather, photos, and clocks, dominate. It suggests that third-party apps find it hard to compete in these categories.
Google & Apple dominate the competition with their default apps
What’s interesting is that Apple Maps and Music don’t appear on the iOS list at all, while Gmail is close to Apple Mail on that list. You can check both lists for iOS and Android in the image below.
As you can see, Apple Phone, Weather, Photos, Camera, Clock, Messages, and App Store are leading the race here. In fact, out of the top 20 applications on iOS, only 5 are not issued by Apple.
Things are not that much different on Android either. The top 20 applications are Google Play, Search, YouTube, and Gmail. Facebook and Facebook Messenger managed to squeeze in the fourth and fifth place, and following that, we see five additional apps from Google. Those apps are Google Maps, Drive, Photos, Contacts, and camera.
12 out of 20 most popular apps on Android are issued by Google
Out of 20 top applications on Android, 8 are not issued by Google, the rest of them are. So, the situation is a bit different than on iOS, but not by much. Default apps rule both operating systems.
In order to compile this report, Comscore used tat it regularly gathers from apps and websites, it is stated. It also surveyed roughly 4,000 people, asking them about the default apps they used during the month of November (2020).
Facebook said that it issued this study in order to point to the “impact of pre-installed apps on the competitive app ecosystem”. Apple called the findings “seriously flawed”. Apple’s spokesperson said that this study was “narrowly tailored to give the false impression that there’s little competition on the App Store”. All in all, the study is quite interesting, though not surprising. People are used to using default apps on both platforms. That comes with the territory, they’re used to it, and they work well.