Arbitron: Typical 'Words With Friends' user plays game 6 hours per month

Words With Friends is the most engaging mobile app in the United States, according to Arbitron Mobile. New research from the firm has revealed that typical smartphone customer who has the app spends 377 minutes per month, more than 6 hours, playing the word game.

Smartphone usage

Users send an average of 11 text messages a day and receive and average of 13 per day.

The research firm surveyed smartphone consumers who are age 18 and older during the first quarter of 2012. It identified the most popular apps overall and minutes spent using an app per month, among other trends. Its findings highlight the fact that adoption rates alone do not tell the whole story about customer involvement with their mobile apps.

While Words With Friends gets the most usage and is one of the most popular apps in the country, it is not the most widely adopted. It came in tenth, ranked in terms of market penetration, with 13.9 percent of the market.

Facebook is the most popular mobile app, with 67.2 percent market penetration. It is second-ranked in usage, with 364 average minutes of use per month per user.

The most engaging apps, after Words With Friends and Facebook, included Pandora Radio (220 minutes/user/month), Yahoo Mail (134 minutes), Twitter (106 minutes), Amazon Kindle (93 minutes) and YouTube (69 minutes).

engaging apps

The most popular apps were among 14 that have gained market penetration of more than 10 percent. Following Facebook, the most popular apps are Google (NASDAQ:GOOG)(39.7 percent), YouTube (29.3 percent), Android Voice Search (23.6 percent), Cooliris (16.5 percent), Twitter (15.4 percent), Pandora Radio (14.8 percent), The Weather Channel (14.8 percent), Yahoo Mail (14.2 percent), Words With Friends (13.9 percent), Amazon App Store (12.1 percent), Amazon Kindle (11.5 percent), Groupon (10.1 percent) and Shazam (10.0 percent).

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