With more than 300,000 applications for iOS devices, Apple’s iTunes App Store is a marketplace of enormous proportion. Apple has released its annual iTunes Rewind feature and named its apps of the year, which makes this the perfect time to reflect on the apps that have managed to best the competition and rise to the top of the charts this year.
Apple named Flipboard its iTunes Rewind 2010 iPad app of the year and selected Hipstamatic as its favorite app for iPhone. These applications have the distinction of being hand-selected by Apple, which comes with the added bonus of being featured prominently in the app store.
On the performance side of things, we’ve listed out all of the top achievers below by device and category, but one huge standout is Angry Birds — the wildly popular iOS app made five out of six top ten lists. Plants vs. Zombies was also a repeat winner and is listed as a top grossing iPhone and iPad app and a bestselling iPhone app.
Facebook for iPhone beat out every other free iPhone application in the market. The app’s dominance speaks to the social network’s mobile growth, and is especially interesting considering that Facebook seems to be missing an opportunity to reign supreme on the iPad by not developing an application for that device as well. In it’s place, the third-party-developed Friendly Plus for Facebook was a top paid iPad app this year.
Apple’s own iPad applications faired quite nicely. iBooks was the free iPad app of the year, and Pages and Numbers made the top three for both the grossing and paid categories as well.
Other notables include Netflix as the number three free iPad app, Wolfram Alpha as a top paid iPad app and Doodle Jump, which made the highest grossing and bestselling lists for iPhone.
Top iOS Apps o the Year
Top 10 Free iPad Apps
1. iBooks
2. Pandora Radio
3. Netflix
4. Google Mobile App
5. Solitaire
6. Movies by Flixster–with Rotten Tomatoes
7. IMDb Movies & TV
8. Kindle
9. Google Earth
10.Virtuoso Piano Free 2 HD
Top 10 Paid iPad Apps
1. Pages
2. GoodReader for iPad
3. Numbers
4. Angry Birds HD
5. Keynote
6. Glee Karaoke
7. WolframAlpha
8. Pinball HD
9. Friendly Plus for Facebook
10. Star Walk for iPad
Top 10 Grossing iPad Apps
1. Pages
2. Numbers
3. Keynote
4. LogMeIn Ignition
5. SCRABBLE for iPad
6. Documents To Go Premium–Office Suite
7. Angry Birds HD
8. Real Racing HD
9. Plants vs. Zombies HD
10. Proloquo2Go
Top 10 Free iPhone Apps
1. Facebook
2. Angry Birds Lite
3. Words With Friends Free
4. Skype
5. Tap Tap Revenge 3
6. The Weather Channel
7. Paper Toss
8. Bing
9. ROCK BAND FREE
10. Talking Tom Cat
Top 10 Paid iPhone Apps
1. Angry Birds
2. Doodle Jump
3. Skee-Ball
4. Bejeweled 2 + Blitz
5. Fruit Ninja
6. Cut the Rope
7. ALL-IN-1 GAMEBOX
8. The Moron Test
9. Plants vs. Zombies
10. Pocket God
Top 10 Grossing iPhone Apps
1. MLB.com At Bat 2010
2. Angry Birds
3. Call of Duty: Zombies
4. Bejeweled 2 + Blitz
5. FriendCaller 3 Pro
6. Zombie Farm
7. TomTom U.S.A.
8. TETRIS
9. Plants vs. Zombies
10. Doodle Jump
