Facebook’s fab four make up 60pc of all app downloads

Facebook's leadership in the digital market is undeniable. With its ever growing platter of apps and softwares, Facebook and its suite of apps stand among the most downloaded apps.

According to a research by Nomura, smartphone owners spend 80 percent of their time in their three most-used apps and among all the downloads across iPhone and Android app stores, Facebook apps accounted for 62 percent of downloads last month.

Together, the four apps- Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp were downloaded more than 142 million times in May.                                                                  

"Facebook's leadership remains undeniable given that its suite of owned app properties comprises more than 60 per cent of total app downloads," Nomura said.

According to another study released by Comscore, an average American devotes about half their app time to a single app. The second-most used app gets about 18 percent of total app time, and the third most-used one gets 10 percent of the time.

Facebook is attracting 126 million users per month in the U.S. The second-most popular app is YouTube with 99 million users. Facebook Messenger is third with 96 million users.

Facebook's biggest single rival is messaging app Snapchat, which saw its downloads more than double last month to 27 million worldwide. That's big enough to be the fourth-most downloaded app, bigger than Instagram, Youtube, Netflix and Twitter. Among U.S. users, Snapchat is now growing faster than Facebook.

Another app with strong growth is ride-hailing service Uber, which saw its downloads more than double to 10.9 million last month. Music streaming app Spotify saw more than 10 million downloads last month, but after that no single app was downloaded more than 10 million times in May.

"Mobile app growth is in the later innings, especially in developed markets," Nomura said.