What app should we build for the iPhone?

A recent count from 148Apps.biz shows that 50% of all iOS applications are covered by 4 categories.
Books
Games
Entertainment
Education

Interesting that books is leading because there are iBooks, kindle and nook applications for books, but neither of them support small publisher books outside of their network.

 Games, entertainment and education is clearly an identifier that the iPhone and iPod touch is exactly what Steve Jobs wants, and entertainment and educational device.

 It is surprising for me tat social network apps are less than 1%. My guess is that a few social apps are enough to cover all social needs.

 When thinking about an iPhone app, you have to make the decision to build an app which everybody would want but to compete with thousands others, or to build a niche app which has no competition but would not attract every possible user.

 iPhone store has over 280,000 active apps, 140,000 of them are developed for the top 4 categories.

30% of all apps are free and another 32.23% are $0.99.
82% of all apps are less than $2.99

Niche apps are less than 5% of the app store but there average price is $25.5.

 The average application price for all apps is $2.85 and the average games price is only $1.20.

• Number of apps: 250,000.
• Number of downloads: 6 billion.
• Revenue shared between developers: US $1.3 billion.

If my mathematics are correct, it gives us…

• Average downloads per app: 24,000.
• Average revenue per app: US $4,444.44.
• Or taking into account that 30 percent of apps are free (according to 148Apps):
• Average revenue per paid-app: US $6,259.78.

  Developing an app is the better way to go, if you want to make good money with iPhones. However games are much easier to develop.

 Either way it will be hard to get rich. Best bet is, to have Apple featured your app in their commercials. These apps get an average download of 200,000.

 Or to have a dozen apps or games developed.

 The statistics above are from 148apps.biz, www.gamesbrief.com and apple.com

 It would be interesting to see the splits for the iPad because the iPad is different used than the iPhone. The iPad is a household computer and usually not moving outside of the house. Location based applications and games are less interesting for the iPad. The screen is much bigger, which I would assume would have positive effect on the application prices. The average price should be much higher (twice?).

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