It’s getting near the end of the year and Apple is showing off the iTunes Rewind list with the top apps of the year for the iPhone and iPad.
The list is basically just a promotion for a bunch of apps and being featured in iTunes can be a major boon for app developers. The company has also singled out a few programs as “award winners.”
The photo altering app Hipstamatic, Plants vs. Zombies, Flipboard and Osmos for the iPad got special shout outs from Steve Job’s company.
I’ll have the full list of top apps after the jump but there were some interesting findings. Despite having more than 12 million sold, Angry Birds wasn’t the top-grossing iPhone program because the MLB.com At Bat program has a $15 in-app purchase option.
Facebook is the top free app and that’s not much of a surprise considering the world’s largest social network has over 200 million mobile users and the iPhone version continues to get new features. I would be that Facebook would have been the top-downloaded iPad app too but the world’s largest social network doesn’t have an official program yet, which is why the Friendly for Facebook app landed in the top 10.
Apple’s Pages, Numbers and Keynote were the top three grossing apps for the iPad and that indicates to me that the company should have just included these with the tablet instead of having users pay $30 for it.
There aren’t too many surprises on the lists, as most of the programs are popular or much-needed productivity boosts. I was a bit surprised that the Bing app for iPhone made the top downloaded list because the built-in search has been more than adequate for me.
Check out the full list after the jump.