Entertainment dominates top iPhone applications
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.
(Credit: 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.
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, online advertising, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom. 
