iPhone Books Already Outnumber Games - But Not For Long

In light of Random House’s interactive books announcement, it’s funny that the iPhone already has more books than games. VentureBeat found the interesting stat:

Books now stand at a grand total of 26,569 compared with 25,079 games, according to Mobclix which listed the most popular apps and downloads on App store. In absolute terms, the gap is not huge, but it shows that the publishers are pushing their titles out to iTunes at an accelerated rate which coincides with the much-anticipated iPad that is due to hit the shelves in a few weeks. Already in October, according ot a report by Flurry, one in five new apps was a book for the iPhone. Granted, it is much easier to get books out to iTunes these days since the publishing process is entirely digital up to the point where ink meets paper instead, whereas creating a new game from scratch is a different thing.

While it is not clear on the basis of this statistic that the actual demand for books on the handheld devices-the books on App store can be so far read only on the iPhone or iPod Touch- is on the rise, it is certain that the suppliers are betting their chips on it. And Jobs himself has changed his mind about people reading as he announced the iBookstore with the iPad as a place to buy books online.

Suppliers are confident that people will want to pay for books. Of the over 26,000 books on the Mobclix list, only 2,301 titles are distributed free of charge. That is less than 9% of the total number.

The assumption here is that the iPad will be flush with books come launch day. The real question is if most of these books will be remain apps, become Apple iBooks or, worse for Apple, Kindle titles.

Here are the things we don’t know:

• How much will the iBookstore support public domain?: We already know Apple is working with the big five publishers, but what about the little guys that are the equivalent of public access? It’s unclear, and most of these apps, of course, aren’t from major publishers. As previously discussed, small pubs would be a great lane for the Amazon Kindle and, more importantly, the Apple Kindle app.
• Will these apps work on the iPad?: Will they work well is more accurate. All early reports say the iPad can automatically blow up virtually any iPhone/iPod Touch app or, alternatively, show the screen in minimized form. The latter would be ridiculous for reading a book, while the former could produce some truly pixelated results. In short, unless these apps are refitted for the iPad, they aren’t going to have support for much longer.

I suspect most of these apps will lose favor after the iPad launch and a handful of new, iPad-formated book apps will rise - and be approved based on them providing free or public domain titles that Apple itself has no interest in supporting.

Photo via Apple