Data Monday: Mobile Maps

by June 18, 2012

Close to three-quarters of smartphone owners in the United States use location services on their mobiles. Most of those interactions involve a map in some way. No wonder then, that both Apple (iOS) and Google (Android) recently held public events talking about the future of their mobile map products. As these stats illustrate, maps are a big deal on mobile.

  • 41% of all US adults use phones to get directions or recommendations based on their current location. This is up from 23% in May 2011. (source)
  • 10% of all US adults use their phones to check in to locations using geosocial services such as Foursquare. This is up from 4% in May 2011. (source)
  • 74% of US smartphone owners use their phone to get real-time location-based information, and 18% use a geosocial service to check in. (source)
  • Maps are the 3rd most popular category of smartphone apps in the US. (source)
  • In the US, Google gets about 31 million users a month on its Maps app on iOS. On average those users spend more than 75 minutes apiece in the app each month. (source)
  • About 45% of all traffic to mobile app versions of Google Maps in the US comes from iOS. The remaining 55% comes from Android. While more monthly users came from Android (34.8 million) than iOS (31.4 million), the average number of daily users is higher on iOS (9.7 million) than Android (7.2 million). (source)
  • On average, iOS users spend 75.5 minutes per month using the Google Maps app, versus 56.2 minutes for Android users. (source)
  • 90% of all iOS users used the Google Maps app at least once during April 2012. Only 71% of Android users used the Google Maps app. (source)
  • Mobile ads associated with maps or locations are estimated to account for about 25% of the roughly $2.5 billion spent on mobile ads in 2012. (source)