iPhone and Android phones are two different platforms and app search firm Xyologic is bringing that point home again with an analysis of the top apps on both platforms. Xyologic found that of the top 150 apps downloaded on each platform in 2011, 85 of the 150 on Android leaned toward non-gaming apps, while 100 of the top 150 apps on the iPhone were games.

Non-gaming apps on Android generated 91.5 million downloads in November compared to 33.4 million for games. Meanwhile on the iPhone, games in November generated 71.6 million downloads while other apps received 25.6 million downloads.

Android was actually even more tilted in favor of apps in 2010, with 116 of the top 150 apps being non-games. The iPhone used to be more balanced with 79 of the top apps being games compared to 71 percent for non-gaming apps.

Now, all but one of the top downloaded publishers on iPhone are gamemakers except for Instagram maker Burbn. On Android, the top 25 developers on Android were a mix of gaming and non-gaming publishers with Google at the head of the class. Google only had two apps on Android Market in 2010, Google Maps and Google Sky, but now the company has many more available on Android.

Here’s the list of the top 25 downloaded publishers on Android in 2011 according to Xyologic:
Google, Facebook, Rovio, Adobe, DroidHen Casual, Outfit7, Magma Mobile, Glu Mobile, Go Dev Team, Kittehface Software,Skype, Notes, Nikolay Ananiev, Swiss Codemonkeys, NHN Corporation, Yahoo, Handcent, Pandora, Al Factory Limited,Kaufcom Games Apps Widgets, Verizon Wireless, Runnergames, Backflip Studios, Polarbit.

And here’s the list of the top 25 downloaded publishers on the iPhone in 2011:

Glu Mobile, Gameloft, Big Fish Games, Rovio, Capcom, Chilingo, Storm8/(TeamLava), Outfit7, Electronic Arts/Electronic Arts BV, Gamevil, Halfbrick Studios, DeNa/(Backflip Studios/Ngmoco), Zynga/Newtoy, NaturalMotion, Pocket Gem/(Streetview Labs), Tencent, NimbleBit, PopCap, Playforge, Clickgamer, Com2uS, Burbn, Orangenose Studios.

This might not be news to some developers, who are aware of the relative strengths of each platform. But it’s interesting to again see how each platform differs, where the trends are going and where the opportunities lie. The iPhone is really becoming a powerful gaming device but Android is more of a broad provider of utilities and services.

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Michael Abbott at GigaOM Mobilize 2011

Mike Abbott, who most recently worked as VP of Engineering at Twitter, has joined Silicon Valley venture capital stalwart Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers as a senior partner.

The news is big for all parties involved, as Abbott is just the third person to be added as a KPCB senior partner in the past three years: The others were Electronic Arts veteran Bing Gordon and Wall Street veteran Mary Meeker. The move marks a major departure for Abbott — while he has been an angel investor and startup advisor, the bulk of his career has been focused on the engineering side of the industry. Prior to joining Twitter in May 2010, Abbott was the executive at Palm who led the development of WebOS. Before that, he was a general manager at Microsoft for .NET online services, which became the cloud computing platform Azure.

In an interview Thursday morning, Abbott said the decision to make the shift to full-time VC was not taken lightly:

“It’s something I’ve spent a lot of time on, deliberating. For me what made it really easy was the fit for me here at Kleiner Perkins, the background of the firm and the people who are here. That’s what’s made it very natural.”

Meanwhile, Abbott’s former boss, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, has expressed support for the career switch. In a statement issued Thursday, he said: “Mike is a huge engineering talent and will be a terrific asset to Kleiner’s technology companies. He was instrumental in helping us scale Twitter’s architecture to support incredible growth ̶ from 100 million daily Tweets in January 2011 to about 250 million daily Tweets today.”

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What is the thread that ties together the rapid rise of companies as different as Facebook, Zynga, Twitter, The Huffington Post and Quora? Wedbush Securities, a brokerage firm that analyzes the valuations of private companies, says they are all players in what it calls the “Second Internet.” Wedbush says there are certain attributes that allow such players to grow and thrive while more traditional players — including some of the leaders from the early days of the Internet — fail to prosper and gradually recede into history. The most important of these attributes, the firm says, is an understanding of the value of the social web.

The social nature of this new wave of Internet companies is such a major factor that Wedbush also calls it the rise of the “Social Internet” in a new report on the sector, and says successful companies are powered by similar features, including:

• Platforms open up their API to developers
• Continuous and rapid pace of innovation (see Facebook)
• The company/brand must listen to the dialogue and participate with customers
• Customer contribution is a large percent of the value/experience
• Every customer has a personalized experience
• Social graph connections drive discovery rather than search

The report looks at the value of Facebook — comparing the growth of the company to the growth of Google — as well as the rise of other key players such as Quora, The Huffington Post and Zynga, and how each of them effectively took over from a leader of what it calls the “First Internet.”

So by the brokerage firm’s reasoning, The Huffington Post took over from CNN, Quora took over from Yahoo Answers — which in turn took over from Encyclopedia Britannica — Zynga has taken over from MiniClip, which took the place of former leader Electronic Arts, and Jive Software has taken over (or is taking over) from Google Docs, which took over from Microsoft Office. One of the few early Internet companies that seems to have what it takes to bridge this gap is LinkedIn, the firm says (although some might argue the opposite).

As part of the report, which also looks at the rise of players such as BranchOut — the Facebook-based business network that is trying to give LinkedIn a run for its money in that market — Wedbush also looks at Facebook’s potential market value, and comes to the conclusion that the company could be worth 4 billion by 2015. That’s up from a recent private-market valuation of about billion and would put Facebook firmly in Google territory.

According to the analysis by Lou Kerner, who also does secondary-market valuations of private companies like Facebook and Twitter for the website Second Shares, the giant social network could actually have even higher profit margins than originally forecast (as high as 50 percent, he says), and could grab an even larger share of the growing market for online social advertising and marketing dollars (as high as 15 percent of the global market, the Wedbush analyst estimates).

There are some caveats worth keeping in mind when reading the report, of course. For one thing, some of the leaders that it identifies could easily be replaced by something else — Quora, for example, may well have peaked in terms of awareness and growth after a recent surge in popularity, and it’s not clear whether it can continue and become mainstream in any real sense. And when it comes to Facebook and Zynga, the firm is part of a hot private market for the shares of those companies, and so has an obvious interest in making them appear as desirable and highly valued as possible (Kerner also owns shares in Facebook).

That said, however, reports like this one help put the spotlight where it should be: on companies that have been able to take advantage of the social nature of the web — what at one point was being called “Web 2.0″ — and how that has allowed them to grow at a speed that hasn’t been seen since the early days of Google. Sometimes we are so close to these events and companies that it’s easy to lose sight of how big a transformation they have helped create in our online lives.

It also helps reinforce how difficult it is for even early Internet leaders to adapt to and take advantage of these changes, as Google is trying to do by bolting social features onto its services through moves like its recent +1 launch. Leading in one wave is no guarantee that one can lead in another — and in some cases may make that even less likely to happen.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Luc Legay

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