iPhone apps now more popular than major TV shows and sports broadcasts | VentureBeat

Is iPhone the next American Idol?

The daily audience for apps that run on Apple’s iOS operating system (for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad) has now surpassed 19 million users, who spend an average of 22 minutes per day using these apps, according to one measure. That means the audience for the iOS devices is now bigger than NBC’s Sunday Night Football and is just shy of the audience for ABC’s Dancing with the Stars. Only 4 million daily viewers separate the iOS audience from that of the No. 1-ranked TV show, Fox’s American Idol, according to data collected by analytics firm Flurry.

Flurry’s chief executive, Simon Khalaf, will talk about this data and more at VentureBeat’s DiscoveryBeat 2010 conference on Oct. 18.

This confirms my own experiences with my EVO 4G phone: I’m watching a ton of video on it, perhaps more than on my TV during the week. Repurposing video content for mobile consumption will be a very big opportunity.