eBooks Overtake Games as Most Popular Apps

I was interested to read in a number of places lately that books have taken over from games as the most downloaded apps for smartphones such as the Apple iPhone.  This appears to have come from the following report:  Flurry Smartphone Industry Pulse, October 2009.

Here's a bit...

This September, however, we observed another category, Books, usurping Games for the first time ever. To illustrate the surge in the supply of books to the App Store, the chart below compares the number of books and games released to the App Store per month, over the last four months, as a percentage of all released applications.

I think this gives us an indication of the importance of convergence in devices.  Dedicated ebook readers have not yet really taken the market by storm, although Amazon's Kindle may be beginning to have an impact.  But they are still an extra device to carry.

The attraction of ebooks on a smartphone is that you always carry the device with you.  It appears that people are willing to accept a lesser reading experience for the convenience of the device that does everything.  Depending on your mood you are in a position to surf the web, listen to music, read a book or watch a video. 

I don't think we should under-estimate the importance of convenience to users.  This has wider implications for libraries than just the make up of our collections.  With the rise of Google and Wikipedia we have seen this attitude of convenience being preferred over quality in the general information seeking behaviour of people - an attitude of 'good enough'.

Libraries need to consider how convenient they are for users as they plan and develop their services into the future.