The 2011 Interbrand Best Global Brands Report revealed that 91% of major brands now offer applications in at least one of the major app stores. This figure represents a significant increase from 18 months ago, when only 51% of brands published or licensed a mobile application.

The brands that ranked highest in the report were found to have more presence in the different app stores in terms of the volume of applications.

Distimo said that brands, on average, each offer 24 mobile applications, but this figure was heavily influenced by the results of Disney and Sony, which boast 636 and 285 apps, respectively, across all app stores. When excluding these two companies, the average number of apps per brand fell to an average of 15 applications.

Apple’s App Store for iPhone is the most popular app store (86%) for brands, and 66% have at least one iPad app, according to Distimo.

59% of brands have applications on Google’s Android Market, compared to under 20% this time last year, and the just 23% of brands offer apps on Blackberry. Nokia’s app store attracts just 9% of global brands.

Media companies are the most keen to develop mobile apps, with an average of 247 apps per brand, way ahead of software brands (with 36 apps per company), business services (31) and automotive brands (29).

The report found that most brands in the top 100 are not looking to make money in the app stores. Just 27% of publishers – with 32% of the applications, have sight their sights on making money directly via the app store, including Disney, Adobe and Thomson Reuters. The others offer free applications.