Apple CEO Steve Jobs arrived at WWDC 2010 in San Francisco today to a standing ovation from a typically large crowd. The first thing Jobs touted was the success of the company’s iPad tablet. So far, over 8,500 native iPad applications are available and iPad owners have downloaded over 35 million so far. Each iPad has an average of 17 apps.
The iPad has proven successful in the ebooks area too, with 5 million books downloaded in the first 65 days from iBookstore. Jobs said that Apple now has a 22 percent market share of the eBooks business. A new iBooks app also will allow the viewing of PDF documents with notes and bookmark abilities.
Onto the App Store, we learned that 15,000 apps are submitted every week, with 95 percent being approved within 7 days. The figure includes updates to existing applications. Apps that make false promises, use private APIs or have stability problems account for the majority of all App rejections.
For Netflix users, a Netflix app for the iPhone was demo’d and will be available this summer. The app, naturally, supports streaming movies to the iPhone (any video available through Netflix Watch Instantly). Zynga CEO Mark Pincus revealed that the popular FarmVille game will be coming to the iPhone later this month. Touting over 70 million active monthly users, Zynga said players will even be able to purchase iPhone-exclusive items, such as a Snow Leopard.
Activision confirmed that a Guitar Hero application will be available for iPhone. It features some new tapping and strumming mechanics compared to other platforms to suit the iPhone control possibilities. The app will be available starting today.
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The tiny iPhone/iPod Touch developer Tapulous has noted that they are approaching $1 million in revenue per month, an extremely high number for the company which has 20 employees and only makes one type of game, the popular Tap Tap Revenge 3 and its variants.
Tapulous says its series of games have been installed on 20 million iPods and iPhones, and 600 million songs have been played. ComScore says the game is installed on a full 35 percent of all Apple app user’s phones or devices.
Even more importantly, the company is now profitable, joining a select few of app developers such as Zynga and PlayFish to make it big and remain profitable.
“It’s going to be big and all of a sudden people are going to say, ‘holy cow, where did those guys come from?’” adds CEO Bart Decrem.
Tapulous, which can be compared to a Guitar Hero-esque music rhythm game, makes money by charging for special Tap Tap games (such as a Lady Gaga or Dave Mathews Band version), through ad sales, and by selling individual tracks for the game.
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According to new data from Mobclix, there are now over 6000 games available in the Apple App Store, giving iPhone and iPod Touch owners a large variety of free and paid downloads.
There are now 6276 games, with 1516 offered as free downloads. Puzzle games are the most popular genre, while racing games are the least popular. Puzzle games account for 18 percent of all the games available.
The most popular free game by far is Tapulous’ Tap Tap Revenge 2, which is somewhat of a Guitar Hero clone that allows users to tap out songs. The most popular paid game is the excellent Pocket God by Bolt Creative which allows you to play “God” of six pygmies on an island.
The second largest category of apps is “Entertainment” followed closely by “Books” and “Utilities.”
