As we approach the holidays and the end of the year, that can only mean one thing. If you guessed holiday shopping and going to parties, you would be wrong. The end of the year can only signify one important thing. It is time to make lists. I am talking about lists of the best, the worse, something that falls in the middle and who knows what else. Let us start this off with the top ten mobile apps for 2013. If you had to guess, which app do you think that most people used on their smartphones and tablets this year?

We have all heard of Nielsen. It is the American global information and measurement company with its headquarters in New York and Diemen, the Netherlands. Nielsen’s ratings are used by a lot of companies to understand consumers and consumer behavior.

A couple of days ago, Nielsen released information on several year-end reports. The report that we will take a look at today is the results of the top then mobile apps of 2013. One of the things that we can immediately see from the report is that 2013 was another banner year for digital media.

We are seeing a shift that brings Web users and Internet browsing into the realm of mobile devices. In fact, when this year started 11 months ago smartphone penetration was at about 56 percent. By October that figure grew to about 65 percent. There is a bit of a conflict on the numbers as comScore puts the figure at 62 percent.

It doesn’t really matter which number you look at, the point of importance is that mobile device use for Web surfing is increasing. The breakdown that Nielsen sees is that Android leads the way with 52 percent, with Apple coming in a close second with a 41 percent share. That leaves seven percent for all other operating systems.

The percentage for Apple does not include iPads or iPod Touch devices. Nielsen did mention that 29 percent of U.S. households have at least one tablet which according to its figures should mean that there are about 33 million tablets scattered around American homes.

So have you had time to consider what the number one mobile app is? According to Nielsen, you would be correct if you had said Facebook. The following chart shows the breakdown:

As you can see, Google pretty much dominated the rest of the list. Instagram goes with Facebook, YouTube goes with Google, so that just leaves the last three apps on the list.

The data was taken from a survey conducted between January and October 2013. The group that participated was smartphone owners over the age of 18. Only Android and iOS users were included in the survey.