Only about a year ago the number of cellular subscribers who owned smartphones was about 40%. Now the number has reached 50% and it is quickly growing larger. With that trend comes a growing popularity of applications for these mobile devices. Nielsen has been researching trends in mobile apps since we had mobile apps and today we have some interesting facts on the current state of app use and apps themselves.

First of all, the average number of apps a smartphone has on their device has jumped from 32 to 41. If that doesn’t seem like a big difference, it is, it’s almost 30%. What’s more is those apps are mostly being downloaded by people using iOS or Android operating systems. It’s also interesting to note that people are spending more time using these apps as apposed to spending more time on the mobile web. Time spent is up 10% from 2011.

The most popular apps are Facebook, YouTube, Android Market, Google Search, and Gmail. People are spending about 40 minutes a day using these apps and they are the same top five apps from last year. So that’s pretty much what’s happening with mobile these days. Take a minute and view Nielsen’s graphic about mobile app trends.