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For September, Book-Related Apps Overtook Games On iPhone
ruphus13 writes "In a sign that ebooks are rising in popularity, a recent survey by mobile analytics company Flurry revealed that users may be using the iPhone for more intellectual pursuits, and not just the visual sizzle. The 'book-related' apps on the iPhone overtook games in terms of new apps released. According to the post, 'Book-related apps saw an upsurge in launches in September ... So much so that book-related applications overtook games in the App Store as a percentage of all released apps. The trend isn't an aberration. In October, one out of every five new applications launching on the iPhone was a book ... from August 2008 to the same month in 2009, more apps were released in the 'games' category than any other and, as a result, the iPhone (and iPod touch) became a new handheld gaming platform, one that impacted the Nintendo DS. '"
Not at all surprising. In spite of all the very vocal Apple haters who love to accuse Apple's products of being "all style, no function", the truth is a high percentage of Apple users are fairly well-educated people and they chose Apple because it does the work they need done. I still prefer Debian and FreeBSD myself, and would much rather have an Android than an iPhone (still using an old Treo 650 with Palm OS until the Droid comes out), but to most non-geeks free as in freedom is just not as much of an issue as we wish it were.
Caveat Utilitor
I'm sorry if I've misread... but from my understanding, there are more book-type apps released, not apps sold/used?
While it may be technically accurate that ebook apps are rising in popularity, I don't think that developers releasing more ebook apps (likely to be more individual books released as apps than app readers) translates to it being popular for users. For one, it is probably relatively easy for publishers to recycle some code to wrap around books they publish and release them as apps in the app store. Making unique games for a somewhat different platform in terms of IO and UI would be more difficult. If anything it just means that the traditional content owners have been moving in on the iphone as yet another platform for releasing their content on to.
People don't read anymore
http://www.google.com/search?q=quote+steve+jobs+people+don't+read+Anymore&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t
This could mean that people will become more used to reading books in electronic form and more likely to buy a dedicated e-book reader for the improved contrast, battery life, etc. On the other hand it could mean that people will find the advantage of "one device" means that they will go with phones rather than dedicated readers. It will be interesting anyway.
Looking through those book apps, there are many groups of people who are just taking every out-of-copyright book they can find and turning each into a separate app. In general, the games don't do the same things, hence the lower quantity.
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
320x480, 3.5" too small for ebooks IMHO
More people interested in reading than in playing games?
Atlantis rising from the depths of the ocean!
Cats and dogs living together!
*runs away in panic*
It's just apps released, I could release tomorrow three millions of "Find your ideal weight" and that wouldn't mean that Fitness apps were rocking the market...
Book apps are easy, fast and cheap to release, hence the massive release numbers, not any indication of a success
I just decided while researching a publish date on BarnesandNoble.com to look into the Nook, based on what I have read on Slashdot. (decided not to go to Books-A-Million even though one is in town, I guess just to change it up..) Maybe for the holidays.
The point is, people yearn for knowledge. That is real joy and pleasure, not wasting time pushing buttons... (Have been an avid Counter Strike player, since the betas.) It seems like we are now giving the people what they need as far as "apps".
Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.
The idea of wasting a slot and otherwise cluttering up my springboard for a single book irks me to no end. If I read at even a fraction of the percentage of books I do like this, I'll have no room left and will have to delete books to fit in new ones in a month or two.
Hey publishers, you don't need to release your books as their own frakking app, release it in a standard format that can be purchased and read in the a reader like Stanza and you'll have my attention. Until then, I'm not interested.
CAPCHA: sympathy
No, they will have none!
http://xorsyst.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/broken-dslite-2.jpg
> Book-related apps saw an upsurge in launches...
I guess that means other apps saw a "downdecline".
Now I'm going to "unthaw" some chicken for dinner.
I had a go at my sister in law's iPhone over the week-end. The thing certainly is way better then my WinMob 6.1 piece of crap. The user interface in particular is quite good.
I was especially trying to confirm whether the iPhone would work for me as an ebook reader. I'm used to using PDAs, starting with the original Palm Pilot, on to an aging Palm TX. Sadly, the answer is no: the screen is too small for me. I'm hoping to upcoming 5" android phones will be good.. and not TOO big.
BTW, my 2 dislikes about the iPhone;
- the thing is a fingerprint magnet,
- and the "page-preview" in Safari is not kept up to date with the actual page render, so if you want to know if a longish page has finished downloading, you have to actually fully open it, you can't see it from the "tabs" preview.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
The "Percentage of Releases" stat means nothing to me in this case because once a company has released one eBook it costs them virtually nothing in either time or money to release as many others as they want. All they have to do is release the same app with a different eBook file in it and a different name. If each game that comes out takes months of development and each eBook beyond the first takes minutes of "development" then it's obvious which will be released in greater quantities.
Now, if you told me more people were actually BUYING eBooks than games, then I'd be impressed.
If games are your only way to pass the time, then that is what people will do. I don't think people are "smarter" because book apps are available, they just have a new choice to do something while waiting at the doctor's office. If porn was available, I am sure you could replace "ebook" with "elook" and have the same article.
"Ones and zeros were everywhere. I even think I saw a two!" - Bender
Yup, everybody commenting that publishing eBooks is not the same as buying eBooks - is right. Absolutely.
But its still interesting because people would not be spending time on it - unless they thought there is a market.
The underlying trend is that mobile internet usage is very much going mainstream. This means the audience is not just fanboys and gamers. People who like reading a book - are joining up.
One wonders how this will impact the wider real-time web. SMS-ing from your mobile to twitter is a big thing right now. As people who actually read books - something longer than 140 chars - join the trend, the center of the market may shift.
Worth watching.
Is there a decent eBook reader on android yet? I was seriously considering it a few months ago, but couldn't find anything.
Stanza. Check it out.
The headline can be read to suggest that more ebook apps are sold than games, while the summary clarifies the matter that there are more ebook apps released than games in the past time period. The sales data would tell us more about which is more successful on this platform.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
*checks Android market*
There seem to be a few. I can't vouch for their quality though. I would not be surprised if more become available as the Droid gains popularity. Also, I would not be surprised if Google released some sort of client for Google Books in the near future. It seems like an obvious win for them.
I read through one book on the iPhone Kindle app (Pursuit of Elegance) on an airplane and it was fine - I still prefer paper but if a book is out only in hardback it's cheaper to buy for the KIndle, plus I dislike owning huge books generally. You can read charts OK and you the legibility is good, you just turn pages more often but because it's easy enough to do you don't really notice.
I'm still very reluctant to buy any eBook unless I can loan it out though (some technical books have started to provide PDF versions of eBooks which is perfect).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But its still interesting because people would not be spending time on it - unless they thought there is a market.
I'm an iPhone developer, and I disagree. If you think about it, a book reader app with minimal usability is just about the easiest application to write, and all your content is free (for most of the book readers). So the reason we see so many eBooks is that people can do them so easily, there's basically no cost to them - not to mention once you have your reader you can simply plop new content in and you have a new "app".
I would have thought this would mostly end with the release of the free readers that group hundreds of books - but again it's so easy to do, that a lot of people are probably figuring they might as well do it as not and so we see the trend continue.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Give FBReader a try. I've read a couple dozen books using it so far. It allows for page turning via screen swipes or the volume control, which make it easier to use than my last ebook reader--a Palm TX. As long as you can find a way to convert an ebook file into the ePub format, you'll be good to go.
Mobile games are shit. Books on mobiles isn't so bad so e-books will definitely over take one of the shittiest forms of gaming.
Like many others I saw the real reason for the introduction of the app store changes in the 3.0 release of iPhone firmware; the ability to produce a framework app that allowed paid content distribution. This opened up the iPhone to content owners/providers as a portal for their paid content, and in the case of book publishers, a new medium through which to supply ebooks without fear of them hitting the internet for mass duplication as PDF.
Remember that Apple are big supporters of DRM, and they are just looking for a small piece of the publication profits for e-distribution. With the upcoming 'slate', this will be extended to movies, newspapers and other paid content too.
Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect