And some new numbers from Nielsen that chronicle the rise of “AppNation” on Android and iOS between March 2011 and March 2012 back up that notion. The study shows the average number of apps per smartphone has jumped from 32 apps to 41, and growth in time spent on app usage outpacing the growth in mobile Web usage on smartphones by a hefty margin.

And while Nielsen’s measure of the top five apps — Facebook, YouTube, Android Market, Google Search and Gmail — remained constant, the rest of the top 50 was more of an open playing field, with more than 20 percent of the remaining spots entering as new players, and plenty of maneuvering going on.

Data courtesy Nielsen

According to Nielsen, ethnic minorities were highly likely to have a smartphone, with Asian Americans leading the way at 67.3 percent opting for smartphones. Nearly three in five Hispanic mobile subscribers use a smartphone as do a majority fo African-American phone users.

By contrast, only 44.7 percent of white mobile phone subscribers have a smartphone.

Women were slightly more likely than men to have a smartphone, with 50.9 percent of women having a smartphone compared to 50.1 percent of men.

As for which smartphone people are using, recent trends continue as Android is the most commonly used operating system, running on 48.5 percent of smartphones, while the iPhone is the most commonly used smartphone model, at 32 percent of devices. RIM’s share of the U.S. smartphone market is down to 11.6 percent. Microsoft made up 5.8 percent of smartphone users in the U.S, but the old Windows Mobile accounted for more than twice as much of that than did Windows Phone 7 devices.

But in a new survey conducted during the first quarter, Nielsen discovered that the two devices are not being used for the same kinds of shopping-related activities.

For instance, U.S. consumers are most likely to use their smartphone to find a store and check prices, whereas tablet owners are more likely to do PC-type activities, such as researching products and reading product reviews.

Owners of both devices report frequently making purchases, including 42 percent of tablet owners and 29 percent of smartphone owners.

Last Christmas, the mobile shopping category first started to get retailers’ attention in a big way, leading to new vernacular such as “m-commerce,” or more fun things, like “couch commerce,” which conjures up images of consumers shopping while sitting in front of the TV.

Most retailers, like Amazon, haven’t started breaking out the mobile contribution, but eBay is forecasting that purchases made from apps or the browser on a phone or tablet will hit $8 billion in mobile gross merchandise volume this year, up 60 percent from $5 billion in 2011.

Except that’s not true at all: The Web offers advertisers a slew of creepily effective targeting mechanisms, but they only work for some stuff, some of the time. An ad on the Web may do a better job of reaching its audience than, say, a magazine ad. But that doesn’t mean it does a good job.

Example: Here’s data from Nielsen, via Bernstein analyst Carlos Kirjner, which tracks the accuracy of a recent ad campaign by “a manufacturer of women’s personal care products.” It was supposed to target women between the ages of 25 and 54. But most often it didn’t — the most accurate publisher got the ads in front of the right people 40 percent of the time. Overall, the campaign only hit the target 25 percent of the time. And nearly half the time — 47 percent — the ads got served to men.

Kirjner uses the anecdote to bolster his bullish case for Facebook, which he thinks can do a much better job of targeting than regular sites can, because it knows so much more about its 800 million-plus users.

Maybe. I’ve noticed that Facebook has stopped sending me ads that offer to get me a job at the CIA, or to meet Christian singles in my area, so that’s good. Right now, it’s showing me a banner for the McDonald’s Angus Deluxe, which is more accurate, since I do like food. But not that food.

The Web’s sorta-close, sorta-not targeting problem hasn’t hampered Google, obviously. But that’s because Google’s search ads respond directly to your input and your intent. Now, Facebook, Google and everyone else are going after the branded ads that dominate TV, where the really big money lives. And if they want to get bigger bites of that, they’re going to have to get more accurate.

So the trend line here is skewing upward, and at an increasingly steep incline. According to Nielsen, more than two-thirds of new phone buyers in the last three months opted for smartphones over feature phones.

And the choice of device they made is about what you’d expect: 48 percent went with an Android handset, 43 percent opted for an iPhone, and 5 percent purchased a BlackBerry. That breakdown is similar to the figures for all U.S. smartphones, but with one significant difference: The iPhone has grown more popular among new smartphone owners, rising 11 percent; while Research In Motion’s BlackBerry has declined, dropping 7 percent.

So says Nielsen, using data it collected last fall. It says 57 percent of Netflix.com visitors are women, and that 59 percent of Hulu’s visitors are women.

And those numbers actually understate the gender gap a bit, because women watch more once they get to the sites, too. Nielsen says that women account for 64 percent of total viewing time on the two sites.

A good reminder that while there’s (still) a big gender imbalance when it comes to tech companies’ executive ranks, board composition, etc., it’s a different story when it comes to tech consumers. Another good reminder: Pinterest.

(Image courtesy of Shutterstock/Dmitrijs Dmitrijevs)

A new Nielsen survey confirms that this is the case, with a couple of exceptions. Of 20,000 U.S. mobile phone owners Nielsen surveyed last month, 48 percent said they owned a smartphone, with the 25-to-34 age group making up the largest proportion of smartphone owners, at 66 percent.

But in terms of recent subscribers — those having purchased a smartphone within the past three months — 18- to 24-year-olds are on par with the next-oldest age group in terms of smartphone ownership, and 35- to 44-year-olds are quickly catching up.

A lot of this may have to do with income: As Nielsen notes, when factoring in both age and income, older subscribers with higher incomes are more likely to have a smartphone than older subscribers with lower incomes. For example, 45- to 54-year-olds making more than $100,000 a year are nearly as likely to have a smartphone as a 35-year-old making $75,000 to $100,000 a year; or someone in the age bracket below that, making $35,000 to $50,000 a year.

But 18- to 34-year-olds making $100,000 a year or more are by far the most likely to own smartphones.

An even more interesting extrapolation of data might be what percentage of unemployed youngsters own smartphones, given the high U.S. youth unemployment rate, but all the study notes is that more than half of those making $15,000 or less a year still own the devices.

Nielsen lays this all out in a helpful bar chart, for those who want to see the full breakdown of numbers.

(Photo courtesy of Flickr/Elmarshox)

You can file this under “not news to anyone who has kids,” but it’s fun to see in print. Nielsen reports that 55 percent of tablet owners with kids say they use the gadgets to “entertain” (read: pacify) the brood while traveling. And 41 percent do the same when out at restaurants, etc.

If you expand the sample set to include people with smartphones, and/or people who are honest about their parenting, both of those numbers will hit 100 percent.

I removed the tweet at the request of Nielsen. I intended no harm and apologize for the reference.

– Oprah Winfrey, in a statement to the New York Times, referring to a tweet she published Sunday night encouraging Nielsen viewers to tune in to OWN, in violation of Nielsen’s policy

Whether women buy more tech products than men seems to be another facet of the subject emerging right now.

According to a new report from Parks Associates, more women than men are downloading movies and music, women do the majority of game-playing across some platforms, and women have higher “purchase intentions” than men do when it comes to some electronics.

In the 1986 movie “Ferris Bueller's Day Off,” Ferris got a computer, while Jeannie got a car.

Women are 40 percent more likely than men to play games on Facebook, represent the majority of Nintendo Wii players, and match men in terms of owning and playing Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PS3, says the report. And women are 73 percent more likely than men to have watched a full-length TV show online in the past 30 days.

Parks Associates also says that women have higher purchase intentions than men do when it comes to buying popular devices like tablets, laptops and smartphones, though men’s interest surpassed women’s when it came to purchasing flat-screen LCD TVs.

Intent, of course, is different from pulling the trigger and pressing the e-commerce “buy” button.

This Nielsen study, meanwhile, refutes the idea that women aren’t likely to purchase advanced TVs.

And while the Parks Associates report says 88 percent of women purchased tech-related items last year, compared to 83 percent of the men surveyed, not all recent reports point to women as besting men in tech-buying.

Confused yet? You’re not alone.

Let’s look at this chronologically:

In 2008, men were estimated to spend $902 annually on consumer electronics, compared with the $558 women spent on tech each year.

By 2009, women were spending more on consumer electronics than men, according to the CEA. It says women accounted for $55 billion of the $96 billion spent on electronics gear that year.

But in 2010, as our WSJ colleague points out here, the average man reported spending $3 on consumer electronics for every $2 the average woman said she spent.

With all of the fluctuating data, perhaps comparing women to men when it comes to consumer tech spending isn’t the right way to look at it. It’s how much growth is occurring overall when it comes to women and consumer tech.

We’ve come a long way from this 2003 report on women being “comfortable” purchasing PCs and DVD hardware.

Despite the fact that women were still trailing men in terms of consumer electronics purchases in 2010 — women spent $631 on average, compared to men’s average annual spend of $969 — women still spent $73 more on tech products than they did in 2009. And that number is expected to continue to grow.

You’ve probably heard a lot about the emergence of female purchasing power. A lot of this may have to do with the current state of the economy and shifts within households: While men are recovering more quickly from the recession — regaining more than one out of three jobs lost, compared to women regaining about one in four — men have been hit harder over the past few years, hovering at a full percentage point higher in terms of unemployment. (Some of the recent employment gains for men may also be attributed to a disproportionate number of men working in the government sector who have been regaining their jobs.)

Many women consider themselves to be chief financial officers — of the home. According to a Harvard Business Review report from last year, U.S. women continue to say they control more than 70 percent of total consumer spending. Earlier reports indicate that this number could be even higher, but some researchers say the number is murky.

Another Nielsen study shows big differences between what female consumers in developed countries spend money on versus what females in emerging countries spend on: More than half of women in emerging countries focus on allocating household funds for their children’s education, compared to 16 percent of women in developed countries, who are more likely to spend on vacations and other items. And yet, in both developed and emerging countries, more than half of women surveyed say that purchases of computers, mobile phones and smartphones have changed their lives for the better.

Bottom line: Women are making more buying decisions, and that includes consumer technology products, though the growth to date seems incremental. And that doesn’t necessarily have to be measured against what men are buying — though marketers like to know these things.

We can only hope that increases in women’s tech purchasing also means that manufacturers and marketers are getting savvier about that age-old question — what do women want? — and that the answer isn’t necessarily hardware in stereotypically girlish hues.

But odds are much better that you:

1. Watch a lot of Web video, and
2. Watch a ton of TV.*

We’ve seen similar stats before, but always good to see a reminder. Today’s comes from Nielsen, which has a very cool looking “State of the Media 2011” report full of cool infographics.

This one, alas, is a tad more vertical than I’d like, but I’m a beggar. So here you go. Note that even you youngsters that watch the most video still put in more than 20x time watching TV (that’s real TV, not Netflix on your flatscreen, etc):

This data comes from Q2 of last year, and it’s self-reported, so it’s possible that it will change dramatically over time, and/or that it’s under- or over-counting one or more datapoints. [UPDATE: My mistake. Nielsen tells me the viewing and Internet data comes from their automated meters which track device behavior, not from self-reported surveys.]

But particularly because we’re about to enter a phase where we hear many loud pronouncements about The Future Of TV (more on that soon), keep in mind that The Present Of TV seems to work for lots of people. For some it’s the equivalent of a full-time job.

*And yes, I realize that some of you could be watching a ton of TV without paying for cable, because you’re getting free HD signals over the air. But my hunch is that’s a very small group for now.

Among the three characteristics most tied to iPad purchasing are being male, a pet-owner and into video games. Close behind are scientists, travelers (both international and domestic) and, bizarrely, organic food proponents. Perhaps the latter, though, is tied to having the kind of disposable income necessary to purchase a device that, while undeniably fun and useful, likely doesn’t replace any other device.

Of course, as previously mentioned, the tablet’s popularity extends even to female liberal arts majors who don’t care whether their food is processed. Indeed, a recent survey by Nielsen shows that the iPad is tops on the holiday wish lists for kids of all genders and food preferences.

Apple actually swept the top three spots on that list, with the iPod touch and the iPhone being the next most popular wishes among the 6-to-12-year-old set. As a point of reference, the iPad and iPod touch also topped last year’s survey, so it appears not all kids are getting their first pick of presents. It would seem some are being told they had better get an iJob first.

In the 25-34 age range, some 62 percent of mobile-equipped adults have one of the more powerful devices, while about 54 percent of those in the 18-24 and 35-44 age brackets have a smartphone, according to Nielsen. The figure is around 40 percent for the 12-17 set and for those 45-54. Among those in the 55-64 demographic, only about 30 percent have smartphones. However, that’s up 5 percent from the past quarter.

All age groups are buying smartphones in ever-growing numbers.

Not surprisingly, Android is the most popular smartphone operating system, with 43 percent of the market, while Apple is the leading brand, with 28 percent of smartphone consumers.

More interesting is what they’re doing with their gadgets while the TV is on.

There are a lot of people trying to convince TV networks and advertisers that they can help tie online behavior to what’s on the tube, and they may be right: About a third of multitaskers use their smartphones or tablets to check out something related to something on TV.

But many more are doing stuff that has nothing at all to do with what’s on. Most likely behavior: Checking email.

Twice as many consumers purchased Android phones over iPhones in the past three months, according to new data from Nielsen. Some 56 percent of the consumers who purchased a smartphone in the past three months opted for an Android device, while 28 percent picked an iPhone.

Not much of a surprise, really. Since its launch in 2007, Android’s growth as a mobile platform has been astonishing. That said, there’s an important caveat to remember when considering these metrics. The iPhone is really just one phone available on two U.S. carriers; Android is hundreds of handsets available on all of them.

The data comes from meters Nielsen plugs directly onto its sample set’s smartphones, so it’s certainly worth chewing on: I’m a little surprised to see the popularity of “Advanced Task Killer Free,” a systems utility. The monitoring company defines “active reach” as the percentage of users who have used an app within the last 30 days.

But nice to see it in a chart, anyway. Here’s new survey data from Nielsen, which tracks device use, both by age:

And by gender:

Note that Nielsen is officially tracking “tablet” use, not iPad use. But until Google figures out how to make headway with Android, this is still Apple’s market.

Using data from thousands of phone owners that let themselves be tracked, market research firm Nielsen found that the average Android phone owner spends 56 minutes per day using either apps or the mobile Web, with two-thirds of that time spent in apps and the remainder on the Web.

And that time is not being divided equally.

The top 10 Android apps account for 43 percent of all the time spent in apps, Nielsen found, while the top 50 apps made up 61 percent of all time spent running apps.

“With 250,000+ Android apps available at the time of this writing, that means the remaining 249,950+ apps have to compete for the remaining 39 percent of the pie,” Nielsen said in its report.

Nielsen says it has also been tracking the habits of iOS users. I’m pushing to find out whether members of the iSet use their devices any differently or more often.

This one comes from Nielsen, and was commissioned by the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing trade group. The takeaway: Users are most likely to watch video via apps from the likes of YouTube, Hulu and others when they’re at home.

The CTAM study touches on lots of other data about video apps — the trade group seems most interested in pointing out that the apps don’t seem to cut into regular TV viewing, but enhance it and encourage more. And that may all be true!

But it seems increasingly clear that lots of people are using iPhones, Android handsets and iPads (and maybe, one day, Android tablets) as auxiliary TV sets at home. What that means for the TV business depends on your perspective: Perhaps you believe, as CTAM suggests, that this is good for the TV business.

On the other hand, if you’re in the business of selling TV advertising, you won’t be pleased: Eyeballs that watch video over the Web are eyeballs that aren’t watching on a TV set. And right now, at least, advertisers don’t think the former are anywhere near as valuable as the latter.

According to Nielsen’s latest survey of the U.S. smartphone market, Android now holds a 39 percent share of the U.S. consumer smartphone market — up three percent from the research outfit’s last report, which tracked market share between February and April. Apple’s iOS holds the second largest with 28 percent, up from 26 percent. And RIM’s BlackBerry holds third with a 20 percent share, down three percent from that February-April 2011 time period.

So, the same basic breakdown we’ve been seeing for a while now. That said, viewed through the manufacturer-share lens, the market looks quite different. There, Apple is the undisputed leader; RIM and HTC rank second with 20 percent shares; and Motorola, with an 11 percent share, ranks third.

Bringing up the rear: Hewlett-Packard and the long-suffering Nokia, with a meager two percent.

That’s one of the takeaways from a new Nielsen report about viewing habits on the two online video services. Just three percent of Netflix users say they watch the service on a mobile phone or an iPad (Netflix on Android tablets has just barely moved beyond the theoretical stage). Hulu’s numbers are even smaller.

That’s not a huge surprise for a couple reasons:

• Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has downplayed the effect that mobile phones and the iPad have had on his business. What’s most important to his company, he’s said, are ways that his customers can get their video onto TVs, whether it’s via game consoles like Microsoft’s Xbox 360 or via Internet-connected TVs.
• Meanwhile, the only way Hulu users can watch on a phone or an iPad is by paying for the Hulu Plus subscription service. And while that service may have a million or so customers, that’s a small fraction of the free site’s overall user base. (Nielsen says it didn’t distinguish between free and paid Hulu users in its most recent survey).

Still, the data is worth pointing out, as video makers and distributors are trying to get their heads around the way people consume their stuff on the go. Of course, even “on the go” can mean different things to different users — yesterday we noted that much of a music video site’s “mobile” usage was actually taking place in bedrooms and living rooms.

Nielsen also reports, not surprisingly, that Hulu viewers are primarily using the service to watch TV shows. And that while Netflix users watch more movies than TV shows, they’re watching a lot of both. That also makes sense, given the increasing importance that Netflix has placed on getting its hands on shows like “Mad Men.”

Nielsen said in a blog post that its research found that 93 percent of people who have downloaded an app within the past 30 days were willing to pay for the games they play. The second most popular category people were willing to pay for was entertainment, at 87 percent.

A few other interesting stats:

• A person plays games for an average of 7.8 hours a month.
• iPhone owners play games for roughly 14.7 hours a month, while Android owners play around 9.3 hours a month.
• Fewer games are downloaded on BlackBerry devices than on feature phones, with a majority of BlackBerry owners playing preloaded games. (Best guess: Brickbreaker!)

The data was gleaned from two Nielsen surveys, one of which is conducted annually with 300,000 consumers; the other is conducted twice a year with 4,000 consumers.

The most recent survey from Nielsen shows that among recent smartphone buyers Apple has been increasing share, although total Android usage still outpaces the iPhone.

“Android continues to be the most popular smartphone operating system, with 38 percent of smartphone consumers owning Android devices,” Nielsen found. However, while Android also leads among those who recently purchased a new smartphone, it is the Apple iPhone that has shown the most growth in recent months.

This comes despite a recent tweet from Android head Andy Rubin noting that the company is now seeing 500,000 Android devices activated around the world each day, up from a rate of 400,000 per day a month ago.

It will be interesting to see how these numbers shape up over the next few months. Apple is widely expected to debut new hardware this fall along with iOS 5, while Android is gearing up for the Ice Cream Sandwich release and Microsoft is readying a new crop of Windows Phones based on the Mango update to the operating system. According to Nielsen, Windows Phone 7 purchases still account for just about one percent of recent phone buys.

Overall, of course, the trend toward smartphones and away from simpler devices continues unabated. Nielsen said that 55 percent of those who bought a handset in the past three months bought a smartphone, as compared with just over a third of new phone buyers a year ago.

The amount of data used by the average smartphone owner has grown to 435 megabytes, up 89 percent from the 230 megabytes per month the typical smartphone owner was consuming a year ago, according to new numbers from Nielsen. And, of course, the number of such phones continues to grow quite quickly as well.

It’s a powerful combination that has carriers in the U.S. and elsewhere scrambling to both add additional capacity and to come up with pricing models that ensure they can make money and keep the growth in check.

Most carriers have been moving away from truly unlimited data plans, though Sprint continues to offer largely unlimited data. Verizon offers only tiered pricing on its fastest network and is in the process of shifting to tiered data for all devices. T-Mobile, meanwhile, doesn’t charge data overages, but does start throttling speeds after users hit their monthly usage tier.

Nonetheless, the cost per megabyte of data has continued to fall, with U.S. consumers paying, on average, 8 cents per megabyte in the first quarter of this year, as compared to 14 cents for the same amount of data a year ago.

Also of interest is just how much more data heavy users consume, compared with the typical user. In the first quarter of this year, the median usage was 160 megabytes, while those in the 90th percentile of users were gobbling up just under a gigabyte of data per month. Those in the 97th percentile were using more than 2GB a month, while those at the highest end were transmitting more than 4.5GB of data per month.

Of note, while Android and iPhone owners were consuming about the same amount of data a year ago — at around 312 megabytes — Android users now consume significantly more data, on average, than their iPhone-touting counterparts. The average Android phone owner is using 582 megabytes a month, compared with 492 megabytes for the average iPhone owner.

“Growth in smartphone data usage is clearly being driven by app-friendly operating systems like Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android,” Nielsen said in its report.

BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 owners consume far less data, though Windows Phone 7 is still fairly new and the amount of data used per device has been growing in recent months as more apps have become available.

But that can’t hold up forever, of course. Eventually, we’ll run out of time and start picking one screen instead of another. And here’s some evidence that it’s starting to happen: New research from Nielsen that shows that the more Web video you watch, the less time you spend on traditional TV.

These two charts compare Web video streaming consumption versus TV consumption, and they map quite neatly — the time Web video watchers spend online seems to come directly out of their TV habit:

And that effect gets more pronounced if you look at 18 to 34 year olds, the subset of the population that’s grown up with YouTube, iTunes, Netflix, etc.

This is common sense, of course. But that doesn’t make it any less pleasant for TV executives, who have been telling themselves and their advertisers that Web video is additive, not competitive.

Still, this isn’t happening overnight, and in the meantime video consumption on all screens, including mobile, is still going up in aggregate.

And boy oh boy, do we all collectively watch a whole lot of television: Nearly 159 hours per month, or nearly 40 hours per week. That’s a freaky statistic but comforting for the TV guys: Their business isn’t going away any time soon.