Market research company Nielsen said that games are the most popular apps among active US users, having been used by 64 percent of “past 30-day app downloaders” in the preceding month. Games outscored apps in categories including weather, social networking and maps/navigation/search, all of which had been used by more than 50 percent of respondents during the survey period. Significantly, users are more willing to pay for games than for other categories of apps, with 97 percent of those polled stating they would buy these products, compared with 87 percent for entertainment and 84 percent for productivity.

According to the company, users of Apple’s iPhone played 14.7 hours of games in the last 30 days, compared with 9.3 hours for Android and 4.7 percent for Windows Phone 7. RIM’s BlackBerry platform saw 4.5 hours of gaming use, the same level as feature phones. It also found that Windows Phone 7 users were slightly more likely than iPhone users to buy games (70 percent versus 69 percent respectively), followed by Android at 66 percent. BlackBerry users were most likely to play games that were pre-installed on a handset (63 percent), even higher than for feature phone users (54 percent).