The same goes for the eye charts, hearing tests, and any other “guide” for the layman. Those are self-help Health apps, not Medical apps.

As the App Store gets bigger, more and more developers are sticking their apps in the smaller categories whether they belong there or not.

True medical apps in Medical now only stay on page 1 for about 2 days. The “popularity” ranking is useless as it is loaded with free apps and trivial 99 cent apps which take up the first 10 pages. They might as well just reverse-rank by price.

There’s even one “lab values” app that a guy completely stole and copied from the original, word for word. The only thing he changed was the title, and that only subtly.

Applications such as iFitness definitely hold the promise of enhancing an individuals medical care and may even hold more promise than irregular/brief encounters with clinicians.

Some very successful apps exist outside of the top 200 grossing App list as the app providers are building free apps in order to generate traffic and brand awareness, with revenues coming from off-App store sales. A typical example of this might be the basic App’s being produced by companies such as airline operators. Many of these are simple widgets that launch URL’s designed to drive users to mobile optimised online storefronts.

In the health area fitness chains with free applications may never appear in the top 200 grossing Apps list but the companies behind them will undoubtedly be making great revenues through increased footfall, new subscriptions and instore sales. In a similar vain the “Ocado on the Go” online home delivery shopping App (that recommends “healthy balanced meal choices”) might be generating thousands of $$$ every week for the retailer from each download but it probably won’t be featuring on any of these “top” lists anytime soon. Obviously it’s all the more successful because the marketing/distribution/data carriage costs of these marketing tool Apps are being paid for by Apple/AT&T etc.

It’s also worth pointing out that a lot of these downloads are not related to mobile phone use as Apple have bundled the iPod Touch Downloads together so that they aren’t differentiated in these lists.