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After surveying over 9,000 Android and iPhone users, Nielsen's "Electronic Mobile Measurement" has calculated the 10 most popular apps of 2016. Interestingly, the #1 and #2 most popular apps of the year were Facebook and Facebook Messenger. BrianFagioli writes: Facebook holds the first, second, and eighth spots -- remember, the company owns Instagram too. Google has the most number of spots in the top 10, with three, four, five, six, and seven [YouTube, Google Maps, Google Search, Google Play, and Gmail]. Rounding out the bottom of the list is Apple [for Apple Music] and Amazon. Google Play is sort of a weird inclusion, however, as it is the app which downloads other apps -- it probably should have been excluded.

Amazon saw insane growth, seeing a massive 43 percent year-over-year gain. Instagram comes in at second place with 36 percent. Facebook Messenger scores the third spot. The biggest surprise is that Apple Music is the top streaming music app, beating apps like Pandora and Spotify...because other music apps had huge head-starts.

Chances are if you have cable, satellite or telco-delivered TV service, you aren't watching all the channels in your package. Heck, you probably aren't even watching half of the channels you pay for. Global information and measurement company Nielsen has conducted some research and found that viewers are actually watching, on average, only about 20 of the 200 channels they pay for. What this means is that a majority of us watch less than 10% of the channels we pay our cable, satellite or other provider for. USA Today reports: Back in May 2014, viewers watched 10.6% of the 197 channels they said they paid for, Nielsen's TV Audience Report found. A year later, viewers watched 9.6% of the 208 channels they got. This year, viewers also watched 9.6% of the 206 channels on their pay-TV service. That doesn't mean customers are unhappy with their service. "There is a jump between 'I'm not watching all the channels I pay for' to 'I'm not going to pay for more channels than I watch,'" says Glenn Enoch, senior vice president of audience insights for Nielsen. "What we do know is that people who have skinny bundles are lower-income than the average, so this is more about household income than viewing behavior." Pay-TV companies need to experiment, for sure, because other consumer behaviors in the Nielsen report suggest traditional TV viewing by those under 35 continues to fall, says Colin Dixon, analyst and founder of nScreenMedia.

An anonymous reader writes from a math-heavy report via AllFlicks: The folks at AllFlicks decided to crunch some numbers to determine just how much more expensive cable is than Netflix. They answered the question: how much does Netflix cost per hour of content viewed, and how does that compare with cable's figures? AllFlicks reports: "We know from Netflix's own numbers that Netflix's more than 75 million users stream 125 million hours of content every day. So that's (roughly) 100 minutes per user, per day. Using the price of Netflix's most popular plan ($9.99) and a 30-day month, we can say that the average user is paying about 0.33 cents per minute of content, or 20 cents an hour. Not bad! But what about cable? Well, Nielsen tells us that the average American adult cable subscriber watches 2,260 minutes of TV per week (including timeshifted TV). That's equivalent to 5.38 hours per day, or 161.43 hours per 30-day month. Thanks to Leichtman Research, we know that the average American pays $99.10 per month for cable TV. That means that subscribers are paying a whopping 61.4 cents per hour to watch cable TV -- more than three times as much as users pay per hour of Netflix!"

Nerval's Lobster writes: New data from research firm Nielsen shows that — surprise, surprise — Facebook, Google, and Apple dominated the list of most-used mobile apps. Facebook's core app took the top spot on Nielsen's list with 126 million unique users per month, followed by YouTube with 97 million, Facebook Messenger with 96 million, and Google Search with 95 million. This is partially a consequence of the mobile world essentially becoming a duopoly between Google Android and Apple's iOS, meaning that the core apps produced by those companies are always front-and-center (and thus always in use) for the majority of mobile users. But not every app launched by these companies succeeds: While Facebook dominates, for example, the company is notable for some app misfires, including Paper and Facebook Home. That might be cold consolation to indie app developers trying to build up a significant audience.

An anonymous reader writes "Nielsen, the company that studies the viewing habits of television viewers, announced its findings in a blog post Tuesday. Since 2008, the number of cable TV channels offered as a bundle rose from 129 to 189 in 2013, but in that time-frame viewers have consistently only watched an average of 17 channels. The data seems to support the notion that consumers are better off subscribing to channels a la carte, but cable companies are of the opinion that 'the price of cable TV wouldn't change much if channels were served à la carte because content providers won't sell the most popular programs to cable companies unless the provider's other channels are also served up.' Nielsen concluded in its post that 'quality is imperative—for both content creators and advertisers', signaling the possibility that more Americans will cut the cord after realizing that their cable bill has increased in the last few years but their consumption of content hasn't."

bonch writes "According to a report from NetApplications, which has measured browser usage data since 2004, Oracle's Java Mobile Edition has surpassed Android as the #2 mobile OS on the internet at 26.80%, with iOS at 46.57% and Android at 13.44%. And the trend appears to be growing. Java ME powers hundreds of millions of low-end 'feature phones' for budget buyers. In 2011, feature phones made up 60% of the install base in the U.S." Looking at the linked chart, it looks Java ME's been ahead of Android for all of 2011, too, except for the month of October.

adeelarshad82 writes "According to a June 2010 Nielsen NetView survey on Internet usage, online gaming has overtaken e-mail in terms of the total percentage of time Americans spend online. Only social networking scores higher. On average, online gaming now consumes a staggering 407 million hours of U.S. citizens' time per year. Unfortunately, Nielsen's not the only one that noticed this trend; cybercriminals have taken note as well and are taking advantage of this by infecting games sites—from legitimate forums and tutorial sites to shadier download sites—to attack the unwary. Fortunately though, Avast has published a list of worst gaming sites."

tomhudson writes "Despite all the hype about Apple's latest iPhone, Android has sold more in the last 6 months (27% of all smartphone sales) than Apple (23%). The gains for Android are coming at the expense of RIM (still #1 at 33%, down from 45% a year ago), Windows Mobile (11%, down from 20%) and the iPhone (down from 34% at it's peak 6 months ago). If the current trend continues, Android is expected to be #1 within the year."

theodp writes "TIME has seen-the-future-and-it-is-Twitter. Slate, on the other hand, is more fascinated with the phenomenon of orphaned tweets, the messages left by people who sign up for Twitter, post once, then never return (not unlike one-blog-post wonders). While some orphan tweets betray skepticism about microblogging ('I don't get it... what's the point of this thing?'), other one-and-done Twitterers demonstrate keen enthusiasm before disappearing ('I'm here!'), and some tweets hint that tragedy has cut a promising Twittering-life short ('it hurts to breathe. should I go to the hospital?'). Slate notes that studies of Twitter accounts by Harvard and Nielsen suggest the service has been better at signing up users than keeping them, including the one-tweet wonders."

An anonymous reader writes "In terms of console usage, the aging PS2 still leads the competition, according to data from US research firm Nielsen. Data the company compiled between January and October 2008 shows that the PS2 commanded 31.7 percent of the total number of minutes spent playing consoles. Only 37.9 percent of play time took place on current-gen systems, with the Xbox 360 (17.2 percent) leading the Wii (13.4 percent) and the PS3 (7.3 percent). Users even spent more time playing on the original Xbox (9.7 percent) than the PS3, while Nintendo's GameCube (4.6 percent) wasn't far behind Sony's new console either." World of Warcraft once again topped the most-played PC game list by a large margin. Tetris was the top mobile game, followed by Bejeweled and Guitar Hero III.

theodp writes "The poop is hitting the fan over tax breaks given to ratings giant Nielsen Co., which pocketed millions in Florida jobs-creation tax concessions but has turned around and dismissed hundreds of local workers after inking a $1.2B outsourcing deal with Tata Consultancy Services of Mumbai. Lou Dobbs is on the case. Lou may go even more ballistic once he sees the Nielsen-Tata pact, which assures Nielsen that OT worries are a thing of the past ('there shall be no additional charge for overtime work'), allows Nielsen to have unsatisfactory Tata hires replaced within 4 weeks of starting with no charge for the original or re-performed work, gives Nielsen up to 6 man-weeks of free labor when a Tata worker is replaced, and allows Nielsen to make 'any TCS Resource' disappear with no more than 5 days notice if their presence 'is not in the best interests of Nielsen.' Nielsen execs have launched a PR counter-attack, pledging not to bully 85 year-old ladies in future layoffs. In a Letter to the Citizens, Nielsen CEO David L. Calhoun explained that Tata won a 'rigorous competition' to get the job, failing to mention that Tata was also tapped by Nielsen EVP Mitchell Habib in his CIO roles at both GE and Citigroup."

Ant wrote to mention a C|Net story discussing fundamental changes in how the Nielsen company tracks viewership. From the article: "CNET says that the Nielsen company is finally taking one of several steps aimed at adapting to the new television/TV audience (those who use TiVo or another service to record prime time shows for viewing later) on December 26th, 2005. Ratings will be broken out by how shows are watched--live, later in the day or within a seven-day period. Over time, Nielsen will also move to measure viewing that takes place via iPods, cellular/cell phones, laptops, and other digital devices that are gaining TV privileges. The company also will track audiences for on-demand fare. The steps are a radical change for Nielsen, reflecting an overall paradigm shift that's shaking up the television world. The audience is taking control. And TV companies are scrambling to catch up."

djdanlib writes "The New York Times ran this story Sunday about the Mobiltrak smart billboard system. It works by detecting what radio station you're listening to as you pass by a billboard, then displaying advertisements targeted at that station's demographic. It's kind of like a real-time Nielsen Ratings system for radio. And it's entirely passive, requiring no special hardware in your car - it receives the faint tuning signal generated by your radio." We've mentioned these before.