Its not just the iPhone

Anyone developing iPhone Apps shouldn’t forget the extra reach offered by the iPod Touch market. It makes a solid global base of iPhones even more attractive especially for the gaming market.

Even for apps purely for the Australian market it adds to the July forecast by Telsyte of a base of 250,000 local iPhone sales by Christmas.

How many is almost impossible to estimate accurately from published figures. We do know that iPod revenue is up substantially this year even while unit growth has slowed. Logically a substantial proportion of iPod sales are iPod Touches. Rough ballpark may look something like this 54.8 million iPod units x 4% Australian Sales x 20% sales of iPod Touches = 44,000 as of 30 September with the Christmas sales yet to come.

Functionality is slightly more limited on the Touch, location services rely totally on Wi-Fi triangulation and there is no camera or microphone, however many apps function well and offer enough power to users to be very attractive, at least in Wi-Fi range.

Obviously base2Services are taking an active interest in all next gen mobile platforms, especially Android, but for the next year the App market is the iPhone with a touch of Touch.