A Pew Internet study found that although 35 percent of adults have mobile phones with applications downloaded onto them, only two-thirds of these consumers actually use the apps.

With this finding, it is hard not to question just how engaging application marketing is if consumers do not actually use the apps they download. The finding came from Pew Internet's ?The Rise of Apps Culture? report from September.  

?Broadly, the results indicate that while apps are popular among a segment of the adult cell phone-using population, a notable number of cell owners are not yet part of the emerging apps culture,? the report says.

?[Another finding is] having apps and using apps are not synonymous,? the report says.

Mobile usage up
Mobile phone usage in the United States has increased dramatically over the past decade, according to Pew. 

Eight in 10 adults today, or 82 percent, are mobile phone users, and about one-quarter of consumers live in a household that has no landline. 

According to Nielsen, approximately 23 percent of mobile phone users have a smartphone, making the rise of applications inevitable.

Popular apps
Among the most popular are applications that provide some form of entertainment, whether it be via games, music, food, travel or sports.

Applications that help people find information they need and accomplish tasks are popular as well. For example, maps and navigation, weather, news and banking applications are big right now.

The Pew survey asked a national sample of 1,917 mobile phone-using adults if they use applications and how they use them. 

A whopping 43 percent of mobile phone-using adults in the U.S. have applications on their phones. When taken as a portion of the entire U.S. adult population, that equates to 35 percent that have mobile phones with applications, according to Pew.

This figure includes adult mobile phone users who have downloaded an application to their phone (29 percent) and have purchased a phone with preloaded applications (38 percent).

Of those who have applications on their phones, only about 68 percent actually use that software.

Overall, that means that 24 percent of U.S. adults are active applications users. 

Older mobile phone users in particular do not use the applications that are on their phones, and one in 10 adults are not even sure if their phone is equipped with applications. 

Younger, more educated and affluent
The Pew study found that application users are younger, more educated and more affluent than other mobile phone users.

When compared with other mobile consumers, application users skew slightly Hispanic.

The Pew study also found that application usage still ranks relatively low when compared with other uses of mobile phones.

Taking pictures and texting are the most popular non-voice mobile phone data applications, with more than seven in 10 adult phone users embracing these features of their phones.

?As with the apps-using population as a whole, downloaders are younger, more educated and disproportionately male when compared with the total U.S. adult population,? The Pew report says. ?And while they resemble adults who only have preloaded apps in terms of education, they are still disproportionately young and male even when compared with this group.? 

Downloading apps
As mentioned before, one in 10 adult mobile phone users downloaded an application in the past week.

Additionally 20 percent of mobile phone users under 30 download applications this frequently.

Those who download applications do so fairly frequently, according to Pew. 

Among application downloaders, 53 percent said their most recent download was in the past 30 days, including 33 percent who said their last download was within the past week. 

As a fraction of all mobile phone-using adults, that equates to 15 percent who have downloaded an application in the past month, and 10 percent who have downloaded one in the past week. 

Paying to download an app
One in eight adult mobile phone users (13 percent) have paid to download an application, according to Pew.

Among the 29 percent of mobile phone users who download applications, just 47 percent have paid for an application, with the remainder saying they only download free apps. 

There are few notable demographic differences between downloaders who pay for applications and those who do not. 

Among mobile users, the average adult has 18 applications on his or her phone

?There are heavy apps users on the high-end of the response scale who have a disproportionate number of apps on their phones,? the report says. ?This is particularly true among the youngest adults.

?Again, there is some uncertainty among cell phone users, particularly older cell phone users, about what software they have on their phones,? it says. ?Fully 18 percent of cell phone users with apps on their phones do not know how many they have. 

?That figure doubles to 36 percent among cell phone users ages 50 and older.?

Final take
Giselle Tsirulnik is senior editor of Mobile Marketer
/>