App analytics firm Flurry said recent research suggests US brands are “not doing enough to create positive app experiences for Spanish speaking consumers in spite of the fact that the Hispanics in general are enthusiastic users of smartphones”.

According to the company, 15 per cent of apps used in the US attract a large group of Spanish users, which it said is “in line with what you might expect given the prevalence of Spanish speakers in the US”.

But there is a pronounced difference in terms of operating system preferences. While only 4 per cent of iOS apps were deemed as “Spanish Interest”, for Android this increased to 47 per cent – almost half of the total.

This, Flurry noted, “may not be so much a reflection of app availability as it is a reflection of device ownership patterns”.

For brands, Flurry said that many have taken their time to embrace mobile, “and to the extent that they have tended to start with iOS. Some haven’t ventured any further”.

This may also be likened to “a considerable body of evidence” which suggests that, on average, “iOS users are more affluent than their Android counterparts”.

But for marketers wanting to reach Spanish speakers on mobile, Android is the key target platform. “That creates an opportunity – or really a necessity – for Hispanic-focused advertising agencies to lead in creating high-quality brand promotion on Android”.

And while Android users in the US may be more affluent than their iOS counterparts, “collectively they still have massive purchasing power”, it said.

The apps that have the greatest number of Spanish speaking users in the US are – unsurprisingly – primarily Spanish titles rather than English ones, with some originating from the US and some from countries where it is the dominant language.

Other than that, titles come from the full range of app categories, “but are disproportionately likely to be in the game, live wallpaper, personalisation and photography categories in Google Play”.

While Spanish users are also over-represented in some iOS categories, the analytics firms said that because the base rate is so low the absolute percentage remains low in overall terms.

The company defined Spanish interest apps as ones where there is at least one US user with their device language set to Spanish for every 20 set to English, as an indication that a “non-trivial proportion of the app’s users speak Spanish”.