10,000 iPhone Apps

Two services that track the iPhone App Store - AppShopper and 148Apps, announced on Saturday that there have been over 10,000 iPhone applications released on the US App Store. The number of currently available applications is just shy of 10,000 due to discontinued apps and a few that have been pulled by Apple (e.g. trademark disputes, terms of service violations, etc.). AppSherpa believes that it will only be a few more days until there are 10,000 iPhone applications available for sale on the US App Store. Total international App Store numbers are not being tracked by anyone outside of Apple, as far as I can tell.

Quick stats highlights from the first 10,000 iPhone applications:

• Games are the leading category, accounting for one in four of total applications. This reinforces Apple's recent marketing campaign around games.
• $0.99 is the most common price point, although one in four applications are free.
• The most expensive application currently for sale is iRa by Lextech Labs for $899.99. This is video surveillance application that integrates with a number of CCTV systems.
• The entire iPhone App Store catalog could be purchased for just over $30,000, although there's only room to fit 129 of them on your iPhone or iPod touch at any given time (148 apps in total, but that includes the default applications from Apple).

Ben Lorica and Roger Magoulas in the Market Research Group at O'Reilly Media have been doing an excellent job tracking the iPhone applications market. You can see some of this work on Ben's Radar posts. I am looking forward to seeing an update from Roger and Ben now that we're crossed the 10,000 mark.

Asynchronous Multiplayer Mobile Gaming

With all the news on Friday about Apple's release of iPhone OS 2.2, there was another iPhone news item that got less attention than it deserved. Two young iPhone developers, Danielle Cassley and Jason Citron, released the sequel to their much-acclaimed iPhone puzzle game, Aurora Feint. Aurora Feint II: The Arena (iTunes link) introduces the concept of 'casual asynchronous massively multiplayer online gaming' for iPhone. That's a mouthful, merging a number of distinct terms into one. Let's break that down into its individual pieces:

• Casual games have simple rulesets and can be played in a short amount of time, such as Blackjack or Mindsweeper.
• Asynchronous games allow for people to participate without playing at the same time, such as turn-based games like Chess or Scrabble.
• Massively multiplayer online games have persistent, shared worlds, such as World of Warcraft or for you parents of youngsters out there, Club Penguin.

This combination of gaming elements is very appealing in the mobile market. It's a perfect lifestyle fit. People want to play games in short increments of time. This may be during a commute on public transit or waiting in the doctor's office. People want to play games on their own schedule. Not every player in a game can dedicate the same period of time to participate. People want to play games with real people, especially people they know. A shared game world provides this opportunity.

Aurora Feint II accomplishes this through the use of 'ghosts'. A human player builds up a character in the game world that has the ability to act autonomously while the player is offline. The player's ghost can be challenged in the game world at any time, and when the player returns to the game world, the ghost can be controlled directly. It's a novel approach and solves a number of problems with people wanting to play with their friends on their own schedules.

Casual asynchronous massively multiplayer online gaming is going to be a hot market for game developers and it's a natural fit for mobile devices. Expect to see more iPhone titles like this in the near future.

iPhone is the Top Selling Consumer Phone in the U.S.

The third calendar quarter of 2008 (Apple F4Q08) was a record for iPhone sales. 6.9 million iPhones were sold from July through September, more than the 6.1 million iPhones sold in prior quarters combined. Steve Jobs mentioned during Apple's most recent quarterly earnings call (transcript) that the company had even beat out Research in Motion (RIM), which sold 6.1 million BlackBerry devices during the same period. iPhone 3G was launched in 21 countries on July 11th and is now for sale in 62 countries, with 18 more planned in the coming months.

Market research firm The NPD Group further reinforced the significance of the prior quarter by announcing that iPhone 3G was the top selling consumer handset in the U.S. (press release). iPhone dethrones the Motorola RAZR, which has held this position for an impressive 12 consecutive quarters. According to Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for NPD, “The displacement of the RAZR by the iPhone 3G represents a watershed shift in handset design from fashion to fashionable functionality.”

This is an impressive feat less than a year and a half after the debut of iPhone in June 2007. With 13 million iPhones already sold, Apple may exceed 20 million before the end of the year. Does anyone have an estimate for iPhone unit sales in the fourth calendar quarter?

New iPhoneLive Conference in November

Please welcome Raven Zachary, an iPhone maven and the chair for our new conference. He will be blogging on Radar about iPhone and mobile issues. -- Brady

I am pleased to announce the launch of a new O'Reilly Media conference focused on the emerging iPhone ecosystem - iPhoneLive. Apple's iPhone is having a profound impact on the mobile telephony and computing industries, reshaping how we think about mobility and defining an entirely new class of devices. Whether you're already building apps for the iPhone or are a developer who wants to make a move to the iPhone platform; if you're an entrepreneur or simply an enthusiast of the iPhone, this is the event for you. I am the conference co-chair, along with Bill Dudney, an iPhone developer and author.

This one-day event scheduled for November 18, 2008, in San Jose, California, will explore the business and development issues surrounding the iPhone platform. There are two main iPhone themes at this year's event - Build (core iPhone development) and Launch (launch readiness and business issues).

iPhoneLive will also feature Launch Pad, a showcase for the coolest, not-yet-public apps and startups. The iPhoneLive Launch Pad presents an opportunity for iPhone developers and entrepreneurs to unveil new applications and startups at a major event. There are a limited number of slots available for iPhoneLive Launch Pad, and there is no cost to participate. The deadline for submitting a proposal to participate is September 30th.

With only eleven weeks remaining before the event, we won't be doing a call for papers this year, but there is still time for community input into the conference program. We're finalizing our speakers and panelists now. We'd love to hear from you. Do you have any recommendations for speakers and panelists? What would make this conference a must-attend event for you? Please send an email to iphone-idea@oreilly.com with your ideas for iPhoneLive.

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