What’s hot on iPhone? Books, books, books!

By Marjorie Kehe | 11.02.09, writing in The Christian Science Monitor

It is up to you, of course: You can use your iPhone to hone your Skee-Ball skills or you can re-read “Persuasion”. But don’t assume that iPhones are mostly about games. Last month one out of every five new iPhone and iPod touch applications launched in Apple’s App Store were book-related.

In fact, book applications for iPhone exceeded the popularity of games apps in the last four months, according to a report by market research firm Flurry. (Meanwhile, Flurry says, games slipped to about 13 percent of new iPhone applications released last month, down from 117 percent in July 2009.)

The report goes on to say that reading books on iPhones is becoming so popular that Amazon, maker of the Kindle, may need to watch its back. According to the folks at Flurry, the iPhone is quickly gaining ground as the e-book reader of choice for many and could steal market share from Amazon’s Kindle.

Amazon has yet to release sales figures for its Kindle, but it’s been estimated that about 3 million of the e-readers will be sold in the US in 2009. According to Flurry, in August, 1 percent of the entire US population (about 300 million) was reading a book on the iPhone.

Whether you prefer the big screen (the Kindle’s is about 6 inches) or the small (you know what an iPhone looks like), that’s a lot of readers already opting for e-books.

Marjorie Kehe is the Monitor’s book editor. You can follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/MarjorieKehe.