Over 15000 iPhone applications are currently available for download. According to a report in the Financial Times, eight out of the top ten are iPhone games. This article will disregard those and look at the other two very popular ones when it comes to iPhone application download.

The Amazon Kindle Reader

Amazon’s wireless reader has always been popular, but now that it is available for iPhone application download, its use amongst the public is blooming. The Kindle is basically a lightweight wireless device that stores an entire library of books and allows its user to read them on the go. There are almost a quarter of a million titles to choose from, including 104 of the 112 books features on the New York Times bestsellers list, as well as a selection of high quality newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times itself, Time, Newsweek and The Atlantic. That should be enough to stop you worrying about what reading to take on a holiday.

The iPhone application that goes with this device allows you to synchronize your Kindle reader to your iPhone, if you have one, or even to read any Kindle book on your iPhone if you don’t. It has a Whispersync function that synchronizes the last page read between devices, so if you reach page 45 of a book on your iPhone, then stop reading and start on the same book on your Kindle later, the book will still be set at page 45. It’s basically like leaving a physical book lying around open, except your iPhone won’t get damaged from it.

The application also enables you to adjust the font size according to your reading preferences, bookmark text that you return to frequently, and use the iPhone’s touch screen technology to flick through a book just like you would with its physical equivalent. The touch screen also acts as the scroll bar on your PC monitor would, so that if the text is too large to fit on a page on your iPhone screen, you can scroll down, up, left or right at your desire.

The TV.com Application

Another frequently downloaded and very popular application for the iPhone originates from the website TV.com. The website, TV.com, is a subsidiary of CBS Interactive and a treasure trove of information about pretty much any English-language TV show you can think of, with guides about cast and crew, episodes, and a lot more.

Of course you get all that with the iPhone version too, but the main focus of this application is finding streaming video for your iPhone. While this is all very well, critics have mentioned the lack of variety: the application comes from TV.com and therefore content only comes from CBS and affiliated channels like Showtime. While the nice functionality is denied by few reviews, the lack of content is a thorn in the eye of many. Also, there is no obvious distinction between clips and full episodes, so you never know for sure which you are actually watching. However, for NCIS or Star Trek fans, this is a very nice way of being able to watch episodes of those shows on your iPhone.