Apple Announces the Year's Top 10 Applications in the App Store

With less than a month to go before 2008 wrings out (pun intended since we're officially in a recession) Apple has just announced its Top 10 iPhone App downloads for the year. The list comes out only a couple of days after word began circulating in the blogosphere that the number of apps in the App Store now exceeds 10,000.

The apps are split into two main categories — paid and free — and then listed by games, entertainment, utilities, social networking and music.

Hit the links in the top paid and free apps to read our reviews.

1. Koi Pond
2. Texas Hold’em
3. Moto Chaser
4. Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D
5. Super Monkey Ball
6. Cro-Mag Rally
7. Enigmo
8. Pocket Guitar
9. Recorder
10. iBeer

We would have guessed Super Monkey Ball would have been higher up the list. Sega reported in August that it had sold 300,00 units in only 20 days!

Six out of the top 10 paid apps are games, two are in entertainment, one in business and one in music. If you want to make money developing apps for the AppStore, you know what to do.

Games

1. Texas Hold’em
2. Moto Chaser
3. Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D
4. Super Monkey Ball
5. Cro-Mag Rally
6. Enigmo
7. Air Hockey
8. Bejeweled 2
9. Flick Bowling
10. Line Rider iRide

Entertainment

1. Koi Pond
2. iBeer
3. iChalky
4. Face Melter
5. iFish
6. TouchScan
7. What’s on TV?
8. Pocket Piano
9. Sketches
10. OneTap Movies

Utilities

1. Units
2. A Level
3. Air Mouse
4. Fake Calls
5. Voice Record
6. Clinometer
7. Spell Check
8. Speed Dial
9. FileMagnet
10. iNetwork Speed Test

The Units app in the paid utilities list was developed by Crossroad Solutions. The Units app in the free utilities list below was developed by TheMacBox.

Social Networking

1. MobileChat
2. BeejiveIM
3. Quip
4. Rooms - Your Mobile Chat Client
5. Twitterific Premium
6. Flutter
7. Twittelator Pro
8. mBoxMail
9. Secrets
10. hiCard - Suite

Music

1. PocketGuitar
2. Drum Kit
3. Ocarina
4. Pianist
5. Band
6. Tuner Internet Radio
7. Beat Maker
8. Guitar Toolkit
9. Harmonica
10. Guitarist

Top 10 Free Downloads Overall

1. Pandora Radio
2. Facebook
3. Tap Tap Revenge
4. Shazam
5. Labryinth Lite Edition
6. Remote
7. Google Earth
8. Lightsaber Unleashed
9. AIM
10. Urban Spoon

This free apps group has apps from every category except business and utilities. At first glance, that would suggest iPhone users are more willing to pay for quality business-oriented apps but we already know from looking at the top 10 paid apps that's not true (only one business app made the paid list).

It probably has more to do with the willingness of iPhone users to experiment widely with free apps.

Or not.

In September, Shazam released a statement indicating some 1.5 million iPhone users have downloaded its music tagging app.

Games

1. Tap Tap Revenge
2. Labrynth Lite Edition
3. Sol Free Solitaire
4. iBowl
5. Pac-Man Lite
6. Touch Hockey:FS5
7. Cannon Challenge
8. Audi A4 Driving Challenge
9. Sudoku (Free)
10. reMovem

Entertainment

1. Remote
2. Lightsaber Unleashed
3. i.TV
4. BubbleWrap
5. Movies
6. iDoodle 2 lite
7. Showtimes
8. Now Playing
9. Scribble
10. Crazy Pumpkin

Utilities

1. Flashlight
2. myLite Flashlight
3. Say Who - Dialer
4. Units (TheMacBox)
5. Compass Free
6. Alarm Free
7. A Free Level
8. Molecules
9. Speed Test
10. myLighter

Social Networking

1. Facebook
2. AIM
3. Myspace Mobile
4. IM+ Lite
5. Loopt
6. Fring
7. Palringo IM
8. Earthscape
9. Twitterific
10. Avatar

Music

1. Pandora Radio
2. Shazam
3. AOL Radio
4. Midomi
5. Mini Piano
6. iheart Radio
7. MixMeister Scratch
8. FlyCast Mobile Radio
9. Last.FM
10. DigiDrummer Lite