iPhone Games Market 2011 Will Be Huge

Apple pulled out all the stops for the last quarter (their fiscal year Q1) and bettered not only their best quarter ever (that would be the previous quarter, at $20.34 billion), but even beat their own estimates of $23 billion to rack up an astonishing $26.74 billion in revenue. A healthy chunk of that, $6 billion, was profit.

What was responsible for this? Everything. Over 16 million iPhones sold, a year-over-year growth of 86%. Over 7 million iPads (now there are over 15 million iPads out there). iPod Touch sales were up 27%., so it's not just iPhones out there. Oh, and 4.13 million Macs and 19.45 million iPods were sold, too. Apple could have done even better had they been able to build more of everything. The iTunes store took in $1.1 billion, too.

Some other key facts to chew on: The iOS device market is now at 160 million. Apple has about $60 billion dollars in cash, in the bank. Over 80% of the Fortune 100 companies are testing or deploying the iPad now.

So what does this all mean for games and e-books?

In 2011, look for a huge explosion given the Verizon iPhone will send iPhone sales for Q1 to the 21 million unit neighborhood, or maybe beyond. Apple could be looking at selling over 100 million iPhones and iPod Touches this year. And perhaps 30 to 40 million iPads. And now that there's a Mac App store, and Mac sales keep growing, there's yet another easy place for developers to market their iPhone games (a quick port to iOS is the work of a week or two). E-books will find an even broader market with that number of iOS devices growing so rapidly.

There is a dark side, though: It will get even harder to get noticed. Sure, successful games from well-known companies will get an even bigger market. But new games from unknowns will have even more competition for awareness. Marketing iPhone games will be getting harder, not easier.

As for Nintendo, I think it's game over, man. Look, this year alone Apple will be selling nearly as many iPhones as all the Nintendo DSes ever sold. Sure, sure, the 3DS will sell a bunch. But it will never be the best-selling handheld game console, nor even close. Apple is running away with that title. And Nintendo can never catch them.