People download twice as many apps via iTunes than songs, says Techcrunch - Apps more popular than Music?

Techcrunch says that people have downloaded twice as many applications / apps for the iPhone using iTunes than they have purchased songs. That trend is even more amazing given how comparatively few people have iPhones, at this time, and how long the iTunes music store has been operating. And yes, the apps are not all free, either - in fact, all the really good ones cost between $2 and $10, so this is not comparing apples and oranges (i.e. free and paid). 

My thoughts: people believe that those apps have real value because they work so well within that fancy walled garden that is the iPhone ecosystem  (and they really do - as I said before, I just love my instapaper offline reading app as it turns my iphone into the best electronic reader I have tried so far). If you want to be in this garden this is great stuff - the apps are a solid and easy fit with people's needs and therefore people buy them. And they are cheap, instant-satisfaction is guaranteed and they are very easy to get (via mobile and the computer); many apps have free versions to try before you buy the paid edition (that's called up-selling... for those in the music industry ;).

But what people are really buying is good packaging, convenience, service, trust (all that more ephemeral stuff that Kevin Kelly calls New Generatives); and yes, this only works because Apple is running a closed system here - i.e. there is no other way to install the apps than thru iTunes (for now, I guess) which Apple controls from A to Z. 

I guess that if I am ready to enter that walled garden, if it works really well, if it's priced very aggressively, if it's fun to do, if it's supported by a large and vibrant ecosystem, only then it can work like this - but only up to a certain level, imho. If Apple really wants to dominate in this market it's going to have to open up a lot more over the next 12-18 months - and my hunch is that they will.

From Techcrunch: "There may only be over 12 million iPhones in the wild, but that hasn’t stopped iTunes users from downloading more than twice as many apps as songs during the store’s first two months of availability, according to a report. Steve Jobs said at Apple’s press event last week that users have now downloaded over 100 million apps. Assuming it maintains the same rate of 70 million app downloads it witnessed in August alone, it could hit 1 billion apps by the end of the store’s first year of availability, sometime in 2009. iTunes song downloads didn’t hit the 1 billion mark until its second year of availability..."