Apple’s iPhone has clearly surpassed all other mobile phone brands in total number of applications available to users.  The iPhone has 150,000 apps, compared to Google Android’s 20,000 and Blackberry’s 5,000.  These apps are used to view books, news, and movie clips; play games and music; and access online tools and utilities, including GPS navigation, as well as social networks.

Statistics show that more or less 2 billion iPhone apps have been downloaded since the beginning of the year. Here are the 10 most downloaded apps from Apple App Store as of June 2010, courtesy of mobile app analytics company Distimo:

Fifty-eight percent of all iPhone apps in the App Store are games, listed by rank as follows:   casual games (15%), action games (11%) and Arcade (11%).  The average price of a paid game in App Store is $2.24, much cheaper compared with Blackberry games ($4.60) and Windows Mobile games ($4.90).  It is a bit higher than Android games though ($2.08).

Casual games have become more popular in recent years due to the mobile device revolution, particularly with the appearance of the iPhone series. Top-sellers “Angry Birds” and “Doodle Jump” are casual games as casual games can be.  Angry Birds is a clever game where you fire birds at little pigs through a slingshot, while Doodle Jump’s goal is to guide a four-legged creature called “Doodle the Doodler” through a series of platforms without falling. There are also hundreds of free casual game apps on the App Store. These apps get their revenues through in-game advertisements or when users decide to upgrade to full version.

Personally, I feel that casual gaming is the way to go in iPhone entertainment.  It’s pretty obvious that iPhone owners prefer light games that don’t take up much time and effort.  So, with the iPhone dominating the smartphone industry, it goes without saying that that casual gaming will maintain its popularity too.