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The iPhone is “by far” the most popular mobile phone device for gaming (what, more popular than the N-Gage?) according to a recent report.

The 8GB, 3G version of the iPhone tops the list. It is followed by the original 8GB version and the 16GB 3G version. The old 16GB iPhone trails the others, but it is still number seven on the list.

A total of about 1.1 million U.S. owners of the four iPhone models have used the device for downloading games, according to comScore.

There are a number of reasons for this, detailed in the article, but I think the most obvious reason is the design itself. The iPhone has a huge screen, a processor that can handle good graphics, and a number of ways to control the game (tilting and the touch screen, as opposed to a numeric keypad). Of course, nothing succeeds like success, and since the iPhone (and its sister, the iPod touch), are so popular, designers know they can build one version of a game for a large user base, rather than having to tweak a game for several different phones.

As always, it’s nice to finally see Apple getting it: people will say they buy electronics for sensible, business reasons, but what they really want is something that can also play games. If only they’d applied that logic to the Mac twenty years ago.

Via [Macworld]