Top Android apps: Facebook for women, maps and mail for men

There are many apps that both male and female Android smartphone owners use frequently but recent statistics from market analyst Nielsen show that women are using Facebook and men are using mapping and mail apps like Google Maps and Gmail much more than the opposite sex.

Facebook, Google Maps and Gmail were among the most used applications by Android users over the age of 18 in the US but when it came to male vs female application use, Nielsen's figures show a gender divide.

Over the last month Facebook's overall active reach (the percentage of Android owners who used an app within the last 30 days) was much higher among women (81.0 percent) than men (66.9 percent). Women were also slightly more likely to use Twitter than men.

While women were busy social networking, men were looking up directions and checking their mail. Men were more likely to use Google Maps (77.1 percent vs 71.9 percent) and Gmail (75.5 percent vs 73.4 percent) than their female counterparts.

Interestingly, Google's social networking app Google+ had more than double the reach among men (15.8 percent) than women (7.2 percent).

"Outside of social media, apps like Amazon’s Kindle and Words With Friends showed higher active reach among women," said Nielsen, "while apps like Quickoffice Pro and the Amazon Appstore had higher active reach among male Android smartphone owners."

Google-made apps ranked highly within Nielsen’s top Android applications. Google’s own Android Market app had the highest overall active reach among all users, female and male.

An April report by app store analyst Distimo found that Apple-made applications such as iBooks, Pages and Numbers ranked highly in the all-time most popular free and paid applications in the Apple App Store for iPhone.

Top 20 most used Android applications in the US according to Nielsen (overall active reach):

1. Android Market (90.5%)
2. Google Maps (74.6%)
3. Gmail (74.5%)
4. Facebook (73.5%)
5. Google Search (71.9%)
6. YouTube (51.4%)
7. Adv. Task Killer Free (26.1%)
8. Angry Birds (25.9%)
9. QuickofficePro (25.3%)
10. Pandora Radio (23.9%)
11. The Weather Channel (17.8%)
12. Amazon AppStore (17.7%)
13. Words With Friends (16.0%)
14. Talk - Text to Voice (16.0%)
15. Twitter (14.9%)
16. Barcode Scanner (13.9%)
17. Adobe Reader (13.9%)
18. Angry Birds Rio (13.6%)
19. Kindle (12.4%)
20. Google+ (11.8%)