Two in five smartphone owners accessed travel content in July
According to a new report from comScore, 40 million smartphone owners in the United States used either a travel app or mobile site in July.

ComScore looked at how traffic across both applications and mobile sites stacked up for top online travel agents and hotel brands.

TripAdvisor led the pack with 6.7 million visitors. Expedia claimed 6 million users and Southwest Airlines brought in 4.1 million visits.

Fifty-three percent of minutes spent with travel content came from apps with mobile Web making up the remaining 47 percent. Interestingly, these numbers do not match the amount of content mobile users accessed. Eighty-three percent of travel content was consumed in an app with 17 percent coming from mobile sites.

The study also found differences between how men and women interact use mobile travel content. For  instance, women represented 65.9 percent of Travelocity?s smartphone users, and accounted for 22 percent more of Orbitz?s visitors. Women also accounted for three in five of Southwest?s mobile users. Men made up almost three out of every four visitors for Delta?s mobile traffic.

Cost to acquire a new app user increases 7pc
Fiksu?s July ?Cost per Loyal User Index? report finds that the average cost to acquire a new loyal app user increased from $1.44 in June to $1.54 in July, marking a seven percent growth.

Additionally, the average daily download volume of the top 200 apps in the U.S. dropped by 5.6 percent in July, representing 4.37 million app downloads. June averaged 4.63 million app downloads.

The data suggests that brands are increasingly investing in apps, making it more expensive to acquire loyal users.

Volume of social media app downloads increases 193pc in two years
A new report from Distimo finds that social media apps increased in downloads by 193 percent from July 2010 to July 2012.

Downloads of social media apps in the U.S. represent 20 percent of overall app downloads. Other top countries for downloading apps include South East Asia and Europe.

Over the course of two years, Facebook reigns as the most popular social media app. However, in one year Instagram became the No. 2 most downloaded app, showing the company?s quick growth.