IPhone Apps Growing, But Games, Music Down

By David Sims

TMCnet Contributing Editor

Smartphones represent the fastest growing mobile phone segment, as 38.1 million smartphones were sold worldwide in the first quarter of 2009 according to Gartner (News - Alert). And you don't need us to tell you the iPhone dominates the smart phone market, but guess how many iPhone apps there are -- well over 65,000.

Everybody's churning out iPhone (News - Alert) apps, either as a way to turn a buck in tough times or just get their name out there. It may simply be coincidental timing, but the popularity of iPhone apps is at an all-time high in these here hard(er) times. And the market isn't drying up anytime soon -- Apple CEO Steve Jobs (News - Alert) announced last quarter that 5.2 million iPhones were sold, a 626 percent increase from a year ago.

IPhoneAppQuotes.com– where new apps are born every day, according to company officials– is on top of things, and according to their tallies, medical, education, business and book applications are the most popular development requests.

A bit surprisingly, to this reporter anyway, requests for game iPhone application development dropped by roughly 10 percent and the development of new music applications are in "steep decline," the study finds. Less surprisingly "the initiation of new weather, sports and photography have slowed to a near standstill." Well, naturally -- how many sports score trackers do we really need?

Other tidbits:

In the first quarter of 2009, there was a 50 / 50 split between business versus consumer application request for development.

In the second quarter, business applications have increased by 30 percent, resulting in a 70/30 split.

Request for quotes to develop new iPhone applications are up 20 percent from May to June 2009.

Apple (News - Alert) has announced there are now over 100,000 registered iPhone app developers.

"Business apps are proving to be the most popular category of apps as entrepreneurs and small businesses realize the marketing and additional revenue stream potential the iPhone creates," says Gregg Weiss, founder of iPhoneAppQuotes.com, adding that apps "are now available in 77 countries." But iPhoneAppQuotes.com is open to only U.S. based companies.

Shortly after Christmas last year TMC's Michael Dinan reported that the Vatican backed new technology that brings its priests’ book of daily prayers onto iPhones. An agency with the Vatican – the central authority for the Roman Catholic Church – apparently embraced “iBreviary,” an iTunes app that was created by an Italian Web designer and a hi-tech priest, the Rev. Paolo Padrini, Dinan wrote.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.

Edited by Jessica Kostek

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