comScore's stats show social networking apps growing fastest.
comScore's latest MobiLens research indicates that 69.6 million US mobile users accessed an app on their phone in April - up 28% year-on-year.
The company says social networking apps were the fastest growing category, increasing their number of users by 240% in the last year to 14.5 million people in the US.
News was the next fastest growing app category, with 9.3 million users in April, up 124% year-on-year. It was followed by Sports Information apps (up 113% to 7.7 million users) and Banking apps (up 113% to 5 million users).
However, the most popular app category in April was Weather, with 18 million users in the US. comScore's published stats don't include Games as a category, if you're wondering why it's absent.
comScore's research also looked at mobile browser usage, finding that nearly 73 million Americans used their phone's browser in April - so more than used apps. Nearly 30 million of those were visiting social networking sites.
"Although application access is clearly on the rise with several categories more than doubling their audience via this method, content consumption via browser continues to be the most popular mobile media access method for Americans," says comScore's SVP for mobile Mark Donovan.
Focusing on smartphone users specifically, 78% of them used their browser in April, while 80% used applications. Those numbers are 19% and 17% respectively for feature phone users.
The research provides an interesting counterpart to Nielsen's latest research on mobile app usage, which was published yesterday.
comScore's charts are embedded below, while it's also released similar stats for Europe today too:
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