If you are born in the 1980s there is a very good chance you owned a Nintendo Game Boy in your life, as this was the most successful handheld video console ever built. If you were born before that, there is a very good chance you bought one for your children. Now you are thinking, where is he going with this? Just keep reading…

Norbert Hildebrand
Insight Media Analyst

By now you may have heard of the sales records that Apple shattered in their first quarter results. On the heels of all this news there were several articles and advertisements related to a new buzzword for the gadget world — apps. The great thing about apps is not that is short for applications, but that it is mainly used by owners of Apple iPods and iPhones. When you go to the Apple store (the one on the Internet) and navigate to the iPod Touch or iPhone pages you will find a link to the "App Store". They offer small applications that can be downloaded for any amount between $0 and $999.

This seems to be the newest gold rush of the electronic world. Here is some information confirmed by Apple and from an interesting website http://148apps.com/10000:

These growth rates seem to be in the same order of the growth of the bailout money in Washington D.C. Here is an idea: If everyone who downloads an app pays $1 to Washington, we have paid for the bailout in no time. By 9.00am on 2/27/2009 the number of available apps had already grown to 24,158. That’s up 242 apps from 4pm the day before!

The other part of the information puzzle is as interesting. 91% of the available apps are selling for less than $5 (24% are free). Games account for 21% of all apps representing the largest group.

And, let’s consider the business model. Game console makers subsidize the hardware and make money on expensive applications software. Apple, on the other hand, is offering inexpensive content and asking users to pay full price for the hardware platform.

Both platforms offer 3.5"-class displays, so the visual experience is similar. Where they differ is the unique user interface utilizing the build-in accelerometers that respond to user movement rather than the typical push button interface (do I hear anyone saying wii?). The picture shows a screen shot from Sega’s popular Super Monkey Ball. (as published by www.cnn.com on 2/3/09 - Why there are so many iPhone games?). The graphic quality is getting very close to the best handheld game consoles available today.

Now here comes the real question. Has the same generation that played with the Game Boy 20 years ago discovered that the iPod Touch and the iPhone can bring back old memories? If this is true we are just looking at the tip of the iceberg, as the number of handheld gaming consoles grew significantly in the1990s. So we really might be looking at the next BIG thing!