Ebooks rewrite the story of the App Store

Reading is fundamental, as the old public service announcements [1] were fond of pointing out, and for a growing legion of consumers, reading has become a fundamental component of the mobile user experience as well. Books now outnumber games in Apple's App Store, marking the first time the games category has failed to dominate total iPhone and iPod touch applications since the storefront opened in mid-2008, according to new data [2] issued this week by mobile advertising exchange Mobclix. As of Thursday afternoon, the App Store boasts more than 26,500 books, representing 18.6 percent of its 142,000 or so available applications--games account for a little more than 25,000 apps, or 17.6 percent total. Mobclix adds that entertainment applications trail a distant third at 11.9 percent of all iPhone apps, followed by education (6.8 percent) and utilities (5.5 percent).

The pending release of Apple's iPad [3] tablet appears guaranteed to drive even more publishers to port their properties to the App Store: A recent RBC/ChangeWave Research survey [4] reports that 13 percent of consumers are either somewhat or very likely to purchase the iPad (compared to only 9 percent who expressed comparable interest in a 2007 survey gauging demand for Apple's original iPhone), and 37 percent of them plan to read ebooks on the device. But the surge in book apps began last year, when the iPad remained nothing more than a rumor--in October 2009, in-application analytics provider Flurry [5] reported that books represented one out of every five new applications launched in the App Store. After games led all iPhone app development categories between August 2008 and August 2009, books first usurped the top position last September, according to Flurry--most significant, during the month of August, 1 percent of the entire U.S. population was reading a book on the iPhone.

The explosive growth of ebooks doesn't mean mobile games are waning--new iPhone titles and updates are still appearing at a furious clip, and last month, Game Developer Research's 2009/2010 State of Game Development Survey reported [6] that 25 percent of game developers are now building titles for the mobile platform, up from 12 percent just a year ago, with almost three quarters of them writing for the iPhone OS. Gaming isn't quite as popular across rival mobile operating systems, however--according to consumer data [7] issued this week by mobile content merchandising solutions provider Mplayit, games are four times more popular among iPhone users than their Android counterparts. And despite BlackBerry's image as an enterprise staple, Mplayit notes that BlackBerry users are still twice as likely to shop for games than Android owners, adding that the three operating systems exhibit distinct personality traits--iPhone is for users looking for fun, Android is for consumers demanding more utilitarian, strategic apps and BlackBerry is for users requiring business-centric tools. But with the iPhone platform rapidly evolving beyond fun and games even in advance of the iPad's release, it's clear the story is still being written--and like any good page-turner, the plot could still spin off in any number of different directions. -Jason [8]