At Appvisors, we strive to keep on the cutting edge of the app development field. Keeping our finger on the pulse of the app space includes knowing how apps are stacking up with consumers.
Utility applications for mobile devices are pretty self-defining; they're apps designed to make some aspect of our lives easier. We recently asked ourselves: What's the most popular utility app out there? It turned out to be a harder question to answer than we'd imagined.
Answering an objective question when most of the information out there is subjective can be tricky. When it comes to popularity, many people who approach the subject do so with a goal or agenda in mind. They write in the hopes that popularity and attention can be generated by promoting a favored app, even if it's done in a subliminal way.
As we sifted through what we found, we also considered other factors such as cost and which devices the apps were created for. We focused our research on the two most popular operating systems, Apple's iOS and Google's Android. We also pinpointed the most popular free and paid apps for each. (As a quick aside, we found—unsurprisingly—that free apps usually fare better than paid ones.)
Now, keep in mind that in a field as active and fluid as app development, things can change very quickly. These results are current as of April 2013, but could change tomorrow. With that caveat, here are our findings:
Most Popular iOS Utility Apps. The Apple App Store makes this fairly easy, and we found the most current listings of popular utility apps for the iPhone here. These figures are based upon downloads and/or sales in the Apple App Store.
TOP FREE APP: Beat Master, a metronome-like beat-measuring tool for DJ's and musicians.
TOP PAID APP: The Ultimate Thesaurus, alternate word-finding software.
Most Popular Android Utility Apps. Amazon has listings for the most popular Android utility apps, which helpfully split popular apps into free and paid categories. We've gone with Amazon in this case, because more than any other source, they objectively list the popularity of apps based on sales and downloads.
TOP FREE APP: StatsPac, statistical and mathematical software.
TOP PAID APP: My Alarm Clock. Pretty much exactly what it says.
What does this tell us? Well, even though we've included only the most reputable sources here, we sorted through dozens of app popularity listings—and found no two listings agreed. Also, as we've noted before, another survey of the same information could yield different results next month.
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