With 2008 on the way out and right around 10,000 applications behind them, Apple has released a series of lists outlining which applications scored the most downloads since the App Store’s launch back in July.
The lists are separated by whether the the application is paid or free – first as an overall look, and then by each major category (games, entertainment, utilities, social networking, and music). While the overall top applications should come as no surprise to anybody who takes an occasional glance at the iPhone’s built-in top downloads page, there are a few interesting gems hidden in the categorically separated data.
Top Paid Apps (Overall):
- Koi Pond
- Texas Hold’em
- Moto Chaser
- Crash Bandicoot: Nitro Kart 3d
- Super Monkey Ball
- Cro-Mag Rally
- Enigmo
- Pocket Guitar
- Recorder
- iBeer
Of everything on that list, I’m really only surprised Super Monkey Ball didn’t rank higher. When the app store launched, it seemed that Super Monkey Ball was the face of iPhone gaming – then again, the fact that it was one of the more expensive games at launch might have hindered sales a bit. Congrats to Pangea Software on the double-win (Enigmo, Cro-Mag Rally). Feel free to buy me a yacht.
Also of note: If you want to make buckets of money as an iPhone developer, make games.
Top 10 Free Downloads (Overall)
- Pandora Radio
- Tap Tap Revenge
- Shazam
- Labyrinth Lite Edition
- Remote
- Google Earth
- Lightsaber Unleashed
- AIM
- Urbanspoon
Wow – Google Earth only launched on the iPhone 2 months ago, and it has already cracked the Top 10 free downloads?
Top Paid Games:
- Texas Hold’em
- Moto Chaser
- Crash Bandicoot: Nitro Kart 3d
- Super Monkey Ball
- Cro-Mag Rally
- Enigmo
- Air Hockey
- Bejeweled 2
- Flick Bowling
- Line Rider iRide
Top Free Games:
- Tap Tap Revenge
- Labyrinth Lite Edition
- Sol Free Solitaire
- iBowl
- Pac-Man Lite
- Touch Hockey:FS5
- Cannon Challenge
- Audi A4 Driving Challenge
- Sudoku
- reMovem
It’s no shocker to see Tap Tap Revenge at the top of the list, as it has a fairly constant level of buzz surrounding it. Sudoku is all the way down at number 9? Is the trend of 2007 (and 1892) finally fading out?
Top Paid Entertainment:
- Koi Pond
- iBeer
- iChalky
- Face Melter
- iFish
- TouchScan
- What’s on TV?
- Pocket Piano
- Sketches
- OneTap Movies
The fact that “TouchScan”, a 99 cent application that “scans the mind of two people at once and compares the brain waves recorded” by way of a fake on screen fingerprint scanner, made it all the way to #6 hurts my head. A lot.
Top Free Entertainment:
- Remote
- Lightsaber Unleashed
- i.TV
- BubbleWrap
- Movies
- iDoodle 2 lite
- Showtimes
- Now Playing
- Scribble
- Crazy Pumpkin
If nothing else, this shows how much pull a niche, holiday-themed application can have. “Crazy Pumpkin”, which just puts Jack-o-lantern faces on your iPhone’s screen, managed to get enough swing from a good run of coverage around Halloween to reach the top 10.
Top Paid Utilities:
- Units (crossroad solutions)
- A Level
- Air Mouse
- Fake Calls
- Voice Record
- Clinometer
- Spell Check
- Speed Dial
- FileMagnet
- iNetwork Speed Test
Top Free Utilities
- Flashlight
- myLite Flashlight
- Say Who – Dialer
- Units (TheMacBox)
- Compass Free
- Alarm Free
- A Free Level
- Molecules
- Speed Test
- myLighter
Hm – “Units” shows up on both the free and paid Top 10 lists, although they’re two different applications. I wonder if there is any confusion on the buyer’s end here?
Top Paid Social Networking:
- MobileChat
- BeejiveIM
- Quip
- Rooms – Your Mobile Chat Client
- Twitterrific Premium
- Flutter
- Twittelator Pro
- mBoxMail
- Secrets
- hiCard – Suite
Wow – BeeJiveIM not only broke the Top 10, but lands at #2? I’m not surprised because of the quality of the application – it’s quite good, actually – but because of the price: BeeJiveIM costs 16 bucks. In a market where hoards of people complain about 99 cent apps costing too much, that BeeJive has done so well is a bit of a shocker.
Top Free Social Networking:
- AIM
- Myspace Mobile
- IM+ Lite
- Loopt
- Fring
- Palringo IM
- Earthscape
- Twitterrific
- Jirbo Avatar
That Facebook is beating Myspace shouldn’t be too amazing to anybody who has paid any attention over the last year or two.
Top Paid Music:
- PocketGuitar
- Drum Kit
- Ocarina
- Pianist
- Band
- Tuner Internet Radio
- Beat Maker
- Guitar Toolkit
- Harmonica
- Guitarist
Top Free Music:
- Pandora Radio
- Shazam
- AOL Radio
- Midomi
- Mini Piano
- iheart Radio
- MixMeister Scratch
- FlyCast Mobile Radio
- Last.FM
- DigiDrummer Lite
Not quite sure what to make of it, but it’s interesting to note: the vast majority (9 out of 10) of the top paid music apps are for making music, while the majority (7 out of 10) of the top free music apps are purposed for listening to music.
[Source: iTunes Link]
This application is best in my country which is about poem
http://www.iamlittle.net/?p=89
Twitter apps make the top 10. Bravo!
Texas Hold’em is great!
Source? I don’t see it on their PR page.
Our app, Spotasaurus, is the most useful app in the store. Go get it folks and save some dough on parking in the USA.
yay tap tap
Twitterrific — no Twitterific
Twitterrific — not Twitterific
I knew Scribble was popular but this is awesome news! :-) What is the source of this data?
Here’s the link to the data: (iTunes link)
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewCustomPage?name=pageiTunes2008_Apps
Nice source!
im a bit surprised ‘pyro mania’ didn’t make the list in entertainment, i know a ton of people who have that and won’t stop telling me to go try it.
I know, right? My app is awesome too but Apple just doesn’t know what they’re talking about!
LOL! Good one :)
Sorry, I have a hard time believing that this was actually released by Apple… Some of the apps are even spelled wrong!
There you go again, expecting journalism.
Idiot…
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewCustomPage?name=pageiTunes2008_Apps
Wow, that iBeer app has so many bad reviews also, the company that made must be glad that it is raking in a lot of cash!
Wait, no Yelp?
I’m not surprised. I tried it a while back and it couldn’t even tie into my Yelp account, making it more tedious than just using Safari to browse the site directly. The search didn’t even seem to work the same, leaving many results out. Kind of disappointing, really, since running Yelp on a portable device makes great sense.
The controls in Monkey Ball are pretty bad, so it’s not surprising it went down in rank once other games became popular.
This is great that two of our apps made the top 10 for Free Utility Apps. We just made some improvements to myLite and we just released Punch-O-Meter which is a great viral punching challenge game. Another new one coming out is called ReAct. Totally addictive.
addictve and free games are what many of us like… hehe keep up the good work ;)
Exactly.
I’m surprised CelebDaily isn’t on the list of free entertainment apps. Everyone I know is obsessed with it. That and Remote are most used in my book/phone :)…
i thought you guys said loopt was beating fb and mysapce…?
Interesting .. cant believe “Fake Calls” is #4 on the Paid Utilities list ;-)
I love OneTap Moives. Good job and thanks :-)
Top webapp — http://www.floort.com
Love the Holdem.
Earth kicked ass from a recent start.
What are the numbers?
Interestingly, where are the top paid education apps for iPhone? There is a great app for star gazing Star Walk. Check it out! This is a really must have for all people who wants to learn nore about the universe!
Here is the youtube video of Star Walk:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ECsFEfrrwU
Cool apps…
I am in love with twitterific. Well , heard a lot about quite many apps like shazam and Pandora – Its not available in the Indian subcontinent.
With just 2 apps launched in may, the iphone has really become a great platform..
Next year ll see aps flooding the itunes store..
It would be great if Apple showed an accounting of apps installed on phones rather than a simple display of apps downloaded.
As an example, I know that many people who download loopt abandon the product after a short time. The users are all dudes, and women think that it is creepy
These apps are mostly useless besides the games. S60 apps are tools. These are just… trinkets. But superbad trinkets! When will real productivity tools emerge?
And does Shazaam work well?
my favorite app was the one that Apple removed from it’s store, sold for $1,000 and did nothing. that makes me laugh.
Pretty interesting to see what kinds of thing people download.
nice list :) keep it going
So many IM apps in the top 10 social network apps.
Shazam is killer – you’ve got to try it to believe it! There’s a good reason it’s in the top 10 ….
what is ‘Avatar’ really in the top 10 social network apps? I can’t find any app of which name is ‘Avatar’
FileSync is way better than FileMagnet. FileSync lets you sync and view files to your iPhone anytime, anywhere. No cables. No dragging and dropping. All wireless over 3G or Edge network. My works while I’m driving!
http://www.jeff-net.com/filesync.htm
It’s funny how many posts in this comments area are developers plugging their own apps :-)
I wish iTunes would have fixed their site earlier so that apps like ours (Puzzoodle) would have had at least a little better chance of being seen then being buried on it’s initial release.
Interesting lists – it would be a lot more useful if Apple included all of the app categories and provided some “real data” (i.e. # of downloads, release date, price).
Cool apps. I didn’t see any educational apps up there which was surprising as the iPhone is a great educational tool as well. We definitely had a great response from test-takers for a GRE flash-cards app that people seem to love: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=297046900&mt=8
Amazing. Not a SINGLE game was a trivia based. We’re really hoping to take that spot with Ringorang. Wish us luck! :)
http://games.ringorang.com
Hard to believe ibeer is so high, Acme Lie Detector is so much more fun as a gag app
tmdfbhzthisbdjffwell, hi admin adn people nice forum indeed. how’s life? hope it’s introduce branch ;)
A Fantastic list of all the top apps. Thanks,
Кстати, я сейчас посмотрел, ваш блог в Гугле хорошие места занимает ,если имя сайта туда вставить.
Bubblewrap is super fun, we have a great demo of it here: http://tinyurl.com/c8qfnu
I am a Rubik Cube fan and was surprised to see it didn’t make in the top list of the iYunes. Anyway it is so popular and i hope it will come in the next year’s edition within the top 10.
e888323 test2 test2 test2
ehuilo vagin
ehuilo vagin 4
ecomment 0-2000
e0-1500
e6000-7500