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Entertainment dominates top iPhone applications

During the first year of the App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch, games and entertainment dominate the list of most-downloaded applications.

Tom Krazit Former Staff writer, CNET News
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Google, as the most prominent company on the Internet defends its search juggernaut while expanding into nearly anything it thinks possible. He has previously written about Apple, the traditional PC industry, and chip companies. E-mail Tom.
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Tom Krazit
You can't do much more with Koi Pond than feed the fish, but the mesmerizing virtual pond was the top-selling application in 2008 on the App Store. The Blimp Pilots

It's clear from the list of top applications downloaded from the App Store this year that iPhone and iPod Touch users are looking for entertainment.

Every year around this time Apple releases the most-downloaded songs and videos on iTunes, and this year is particularly interesting because it's the first year of the App Store. Six of the top 10 paid apps were games, including Apple's Texas Hold-Em and the heavily promoted Super Monkey Ball from Sega, but Koi Pond's mesmerizing virtual aquarium led the way as the top-selling paid application for the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

On the free side, Pandora Radio took the top spot, followed by Facebook's iPhone application and Tapulous' Tap Tap Revenge. Other interesting apps that made the top 10 in both categories? iBeer (paid) and Lightsaber Unleashed (free).

Apple separates the top applications list into several categories on the iTunes Store, such as entertainment, utilities, social networking, and music. The full list (iTunes link) is worth a look if you've been searching for new applications to add to your iPhone. I added Recorder (ninth overall in the paid category) this morning as a way of finally putting my old digital recorder out of its misery. And check out these graphs from O'Reilly's Radar that take a look at certain stats such as the changing percentage of paid versus free applications.