These are the most popular iPhone apps in every Manhattan nabe

The iPhone has become ubiquitous in New York, but what apps are people downloading on it?

We set out to find the answer.

In iOS 7, the latest iteration of Apple's mobile operating system, users can now see what apps are most popular in their surrounding area through a built-in function in the App Store called "Popular Near Me." The feature tracks and lists what apps have the highest downloads around you, based on your GPS location.

Last week, amNewYork surveyed every neighborhood in Manhattan, heading out with our iPhones in hand to see what apps were most popular where. We measured during the workday, and walked around the neighborhoods to get a variety.

Transit apps were by far the most common -- in some parts of the city accounting for as many as eight of the top 10 most-downloaded apps -- so we've left them out of the roundups for most neighborhoods.

Beyond that, we found that the Financial District likes banking and city guide apps; Chelsea is very health-conscious with its download choices; midtown west skews heavily toward transit and train apps, likely because of Penn Station; and the Upper West Side is the only neighborhood to have a baby monitor app.

This type of geotagged information is an emerging form of data collection, and as the technology matures it could be increasingly important to businesses and marketing, said Scott Kurnit, CEO of online apps Keep and The Swizzle, and founder of About.com.

"More knowledge is always good for any business. The question is whether businesses have the ability to sift and sort it and make it actionable," Kurnit said. "The fascinating thing about big data is that it's everywhere but people are having issues of how to make sense of it."

Kurnit went on: "I think that geo-targeting could well be the next big movement in

technology because our smartphones are replacing our computers. As they do that, they get significantly more uses than they did when they sat on our desks or in briefcases."

***