Nielsen has just released data from Q1-Q3 2012 that shows the top 10 most used iPhone apps of the year. Four of the ten apps on the list are stock iOS apps. However, both the Maps and YouTube app were either heavily modified or removed altogether when iOS 6 dropped towards the end of Q3. At the time of the study, Facebook took 3 of the 10 apps with Facebook, Facebook Messenger and the newly acquired Instagram. Google held only one app in the top 10 list, but that’s expected to change over the next year with the introduction of the new native Google Maps apps for iOS.
In terms of growth, Facebook Messenger experienced a 544 percent growth, making it the number one highest grower of the year. Second place goes to Instagram, which experienced a 197 percent growth. The only app to experience negative growth was the YouTube app, which experienced a 4 percent loss. This is likely because the official YouTube app was removed from iOS with the introduction of iOS 6, though a new application was released into the App Store soon afterwards.
