According to a new survey conducted by mobile analytics company Flurry, developers now launch more e-book apps than games in Apple’s iTunes App Store. Games now represent 13% of the new releases while 20% of all the new apps in the App Store are e-books. One of the reasons for this is that it’s quite easy for developers to release large numbers of e-books. Developers just have to switch out the text, rename the app and send it to Apple for approval.
This data from Flurry doesn’t tell us much about how many people actually download e-books on the iPhone, though an earlier report from Flurry showed that the iPhone e-book market saw impressive growth this year. The B&N Reader, Amazon Kindle app and Stanza are still the most popular e-book apps and it would be interesting to see more data about how users use these apps. While it’s easy for developers to release lots of e-book apps based on public domain texts, this data tells us very little about how many people actually use them.
More Than Just Static Text
Over time, e-books on the iPhone will hopefully become more interesting than the current crop of apps. While today’s hardware e-readers mimic traditional books, the next generation of e-readers will likely go beyond this and the iPhone is already in a position to lead the charge. Creative’s forthcoming Zii MediaBook will offer some of this functionality. With iTunes LP, Apple also has a format that publishers could use to create richer e-book experiences. iTunes LPs aren’t compatible with the iPhone and iPod touch, yet. It is likely only a matter of time before Apple brings this format to its mobile devices, though.
