Most of it are ports of flash games.

Key letters here are O and S after the i.

yeah it's an OS, meaning it should be compared to that respect to comparable structures.... like Windows OS, now i' wouldn't mind a survey of how many PC games, indie games and trash games are arround compared to iOS.

note: I love my Iphone and my igames... I just believe this comparison is stupid.

Comparisons like this usually lead to something...As posters before me have stipulated, does allowing anyone and everyone who can program release an iOS game present a crisis of oversaturation Ala 1983? Does the sheer amount of games hint at Apple taking gaming seriously and thinking about either jumping in the console market, vying with Nintendo for hand-held gaming dominance, or both?

Well yeah, if you want to call those 'games'... XD

The iOS publishing plan is simply the easiest way for a developer to get their games on a widely adopted platform that has a built in means of generating and collecting revenue.

That's really all there is to it in explaining the numbers.

If you're an aspiring game developer and don't have the resources in man power, funding or development tools for even a modest budget game on a closed platform, developing and publishing through iOS means very little risk/exposure even if success stories are certainly the exception rather than the norm.

Just about any programmer or game developer could potentially come up with the next great idea and have it developed into a commercial product that generates revenue. 

Naturally, it helps that the majority of iOS games have a rapid turnaround time with minimal investment and are often the price of a music track on iTunes, but not all great game ideas require 8 figure budgets.

With the iOS, the big issue for the developer is simply marketing as there is little odds of being discovered accidentally without significant word of mouth to draw attention and sales.

Android should be generating similar numbers given enough time as it is based upon the same ease of development type system.

iOS is WAY easier to develop for than Android... The problem with Android is that it is WAY too split up; essentially, if you don't have a Samsung Galaxy S, a Droid, or a Droid Incredible, many developers will not support your phone. In order to support the entire Android Platform, many different versions of the game need to be created which need to take into account interface (some phones support different interface options), hardware, screen resolution, etc... Which could result in different sets of assets required to be created.

Not to mention, Google always breaks a lot every time they upgrade the OS. These are just a few of the reasons why Android does not have nearly the support nor sales that iOS has. It's not a problem that can really be fixed. At the very best, Android will become the successor of JME in the mobile market; but iOS is already on its way to something on another level. The reason why iOS is being considered as a possible contender is because a developer needs to only develop for the lowest supported device, and they have a game that works on everything; although putting a superior version on Retina and iPad hardware will help a product compete on the highest end hardware. Android doesn't have this advantage. Essentially, three years from now a developer needs to make one game, and it is launched on the Apple app store to ~200 million devices that will run it; currently the number is over 120 million.

There was a prediction that the flood of games would bury the possibility for large success on the app store; that iOS would not be a place developers would want to launch their titles as a result. This is constantly disproven. Rage, which launched a few days ago, is only the latest title to disprove that prediction. Last December alone, the iOS app store generated $250 million USD in sales - which is very heavy. So far, it is difficult to see if this is at all going to impact traditional handheld console sales; but as it stands - piracy on the DS appears to be the biggest offender in the gaming industry today.

it's quite conveniet that PC is missed at all from those stats

Dividing $200M (after Apple' tax) between over 250K of apps there, I wouldn't call it such tremendous success as everyone says though ;)

Certainly I'm not objecting the fact App Store gave birth to more than dozen of real success stories by that comment.

I am the only one who read ioi?

The machine in my sig laughs at such numbers =P. Still though, I haven't seen that many high quality games on iPhone, DS is still my number one choice for portable gaming atm with the obvious PSP right below it, then my iPhone, so....