Books start to outstrip games on the iPhone, claims a new industry report.

“games were the number one category of apps downloaded on the iPhone every month from August 2008 until August 2009. However, in the last four months, book apps have exceeded the popularity of games apps – with one out of every five new apps launching in October having been a book. In September, games apps were overtaken by book apps for the first time.”

It rather sounds to me like fuzzy data in search of a headline, and the press reports fail to make a clear distinction between sales and ‘launching’. Such statistics may perhaps be an artefact of an over-saturated games market, and a sudden flood of ebooks from a particular set of publishers.