How important is it to develop banking tools for the tablet?

Perhaps not so important. A new study released today by Flurry, a mobile analytics company, looked at activity in May of more than 44,000 mobile devices, and found that those used by consumers who are considered “personal finance geeks,” based on their types of apps, more often utilize iPhones rather than iPads. Specifically, among iOS users, around 80% rely on iPhones vs. 20% on iPads. On average, across all types of consumers, 72% use iPhones vs. 28% who use iPads.

Below is the breakdown of iPhone to iPad users across a wide assortment of personas:

Granted, we are talking about “personal finance geeks,” but it stands to reason that application development would be most valuable to this subset of consumers, and fewer of them rely on iPads. Other consumer-types might be happy with just an iPhone app or the standard online banking application accessed via tablet. The caveat here is that many online banking platforms are just wildly ungainly in tablet form.

Now, why it is that pet owners prefer iPads we have no clue.

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Another, somewhat-unrelated factoid from the Flurry report pertains to times of usage. Flurry determined that iPads are for the evening and iPhones are for late night. Flurry’s theory: “This may be insomniacs reaching for phones at their bedside or those Singles and Hip Urban Lifestylers finding their way home from a late night.” Makes sense.