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For September, Book-Related Apps Overtook Games On iPhone

Posted by timothy on from the fall's-good-contemplative-reading-weather dept.

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. '"

12 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. No surprise there... by clang_jangle · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:No surprise there... by tomhudson · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, it's because it's back-to-school season. Ask any parent.

    2. Re:No surprise there... by beelsebob · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Your speculation appears false. Go take a look at the iTunes store one of these days.

    3. Re:No surprise there... by beelsebob · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Nicely assumed. And there's nothing insensitive about telling you to look at something before making assumptions. The fact that you can't look has only got to do with your choice to value freedom over functionality.

      For what it's worth, the iPhone as far as I've seen has generated some of the most innovative games in many years, simply because it's got some relatively "weird" control systems. You are right that there are many flash-game alikes, but there's also hundreds of *really* high quality games out there. Unfortunately, I can't link them though, as it would only anger the linux geek further.

  2. What's the correlation? by Necroloth · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm sorry if I've misread... but from my understanding, there are more book-type apps released, not apps sold/used?

  3. Maybe by zblack_eagle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. interesting for dedicated e-book manufacturers by Chrisq · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  5. It's easier to produce a 100 book apps by Chris_Jefferson · · Score: 4, Informative

    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
  6. Calm people, calm... by omgarthas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

  7. screw that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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!

  8. the iPhone is a so-so ebook reader by obarthelemy · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.
  9. Re:Let me quote Steve Jobs ... by emm-tee · · Score: 3, Funny

    People

    tl;dr

    ;)