At the AppNation conference in San Francisco this week, research firm Nielsen’s Jonathan Carson, CEO, Telecom unveiled some fresh research on the U.S. mobile apps market. The study strengthens Android and IOS’s status as the two most dominant mobile OSs, and sheds some light on consumer trends.

Nielsen reports 36 percent of Americans currently own a Smartphone, and that iPhone and Android users accounted for the 74 percent of mobile app downloads in the past 30 days. Further, this figure is backed by a number of activity patterns which currently lean more towards the iPhone.

“App downloaders with Apple iOS and Android OS smartphones have more applications on their mobile phones than those with other kinds of smartphones, with an average of 48 apps on iPhones and 35 apps on Android phones. (By comparison, app downloaders with Blackberry RIM smartphones only had an average of 15 apps on their phones.)”

When it comes down to usage, 68 percent of iPhone users and 60 percent of Android users reported using their mobile. This is compared to the 45 percent of app downloaders with Blackberry phones.

Indeed, it seems that Apple’s operating system’s dominance in this space will persist, at least throughout the current year. Research firm HIS released a report today forecasting that Apple will take a 76 percent share of the global app market this year. This figure is expected to slide to 60 percent by 2014, but IOS remains to be the first platform on developers’ lists.

One example and indicator of the current market is Peel. Peel’s deal is television recommendations, through an app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It suggests titles based on the user’s personal preferences, which are determined with more accuracy the more the user interacts with the app.  It doesn’t seem a market distinction, but this concept proved to be so effective the company just closed a $16.7 million second round of funding. The round was led by by Lightspeed Venture Partners’ Ravi Mhatre.