Here at Phones Review every now and then we like to engage our readership in a bit of a discussion in a bid to find out more about their phone needs, habits and desires. Today we’re turning our attention to apps and whether readers are more likely to choose paid or free apps for their smartphones.

Just a few years ago we could never have foreseen just how immense the market for smartphone apps would become and yet based on our own smartphone use and the popularity of many apps, we know just how much a part of everyday life they’ve become for many people. It’s difficult to imagine now what we did before we had apps and we think it’s fair to say they can be enriching, entertaining and enlightening. Although the market for apps is already phenomenal it seems that it can only keep growing as more and more people enter the smartphone realm.

The main players in the mobile app world are the Apple App Store for iOS devices (iPhone, iPod touch and iPad), Google Play (previously Android Market) for Android devices, the BlackBerry App World for BlackBerry devices and Windows Marketplace for Windows Phone devices. The number of apps involved is truly staggering. For instance in February 2012 there were around 725,000 apps available in the Apple App Store according to Wikipedia and some of you may recall that in January 2011 the 10 billionth download was made from the App Store. Google Play also had around 450,000 apps available as of March 2012.

A while ago we told of a survey whereby it had been found that Android users were more drawn to freebies and in the US 89% of downloaded Android apps were free whereas the equivalent for iOS users was only 73%. We found this intriguing and wondered if the average Android device owner was more likely to be budget conscious or whether this difference was purely coincidental and we’d like to hear your thoughts on this.

We’d also like to know how this bears out with our own readers. If you take a look at your smartphone now and consider how many are free apps and how many are paid apps would you say they are pretty evenly split, or maybe you only ever download the free variety? Another thing to consider is the number of available apps that are free but that can also be upgraded to a premium paid version, such as the smash hit ‘Draw Something.’ We wonder how many of you start off by downloading the free app to try it out but then end up upgrading to the paid version or maybe you usually opt for the paid equivalent straight away?

We’d really like to find out more about our readers’ smartphone use and app choices so do let us have your comments and remember to also let us know what operating system platform your device uses. Will all your comments reflect the earlier survey that showed Android users were more likely to download free apps or maybe your usage will contradict that completely? We can’t wait to find out so please do send us your comments.