The iPhone’s massive lead in the total number of apps may no longer be translating into a similar advantage in the marketplace.

Apple’s iPhone famously has many more apps than even its closest competitor (the iPhone has over 100,000 available, compared to about 20,000 Android apps and around 4,500 on Blackberry App World).

We looked at the most popular application categories across platforms and compiled the top apps in each category for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. Our analysis found a great deal of similarity in the most popular apps in the most active categories, demonstrating that despite the big differences in the number of apps available by device, for the majority of consumers, there is less and less to choose between them.

Cross-platform apps did particularly well. Evernote registered among the top three of the most popular apps in the Lists and Notes category on iPhone, Android and Blackberry. Similarly, Pandora Radio is among the top three music apps on all three smartphone platforms. Also, Barcode readers have recently shot to the top of the most sought after apps on all three leading smartphone platforms.

Some platform-specific favorites held their own. However, in the Lists and Notes category, Evernote shared the top three spot with different lesser-known competitors on each platform: Things and AwesomeNote on iPhone, ThinkingSpace and QuickList on Android, and TaskManager and SlickTasks on BlackBerry.

To a customer, the app catalog is a key component of the smartphone experience. Our cross-platform store on Facebook® is currently the only place they can directly compare what is available. We crowd-source our recommendations to expose popular apps that you don’t find necessarily find in Top 20 charts.

If you are thinking about switching to a new smartphone, don’t worry! Each smartphone catalog has good coverage in the categories that mattered most.

If you’re switching to a new phone, you don’t want to give up functionality. It’s not really necessary to match Apple app-for-app to offer a compelling mobile experience. Android and other platforms only need to offer the best and the brightest, as well as the same utility and features.