American pollsters Nielsen have released details on a survey of mobile users and their attitudes to mobile applications. Being a US company, the 4,200 people surveyed provide a good cross section of which genres are popular, and the huge le-up that built in applications receive. Any developer looking for a new project should be taking notes.

While Apple may be best known for mobile apps, BlackBerry, Android and other devices also have a huge range of apps available in their stores, as well as in those operated by mobile service providers. With smartphones expected to overtake feature phones in the U.S. by 2011, the popularity of mobile apps will only grow.

Lots of interesting numbers here, such as the average number of apps on a smartphone is 22,although the iPhone has an average of 37 and the Blackberry just 10. That says a lot about where the focus of each device is.

There should be no surprise that games are the most popular application, but perhaps reflecting on a focus for all-in-one devices, music applications are the second most popular.I love the fact that the Weather Channel up seems to be very high up in the charts – which you would expect for a built in application but nice to have some evidence to back up the assumption of the pwoer of incumbency in the firmware.

More details at Nielsen Wire.