It’s another sign of the increasing competition on the App Store – and iPhone / iPod touch owners’ hunger for new titles. HandyGames also finds that in September, 55% of the Top 20 paid games were from ‘big players’ like EA and Gameloft, but that’s fallen to 32% now.

In part this is down to the individual snapshots of the chart – but in any case, the paid games chart is now only part of the story, alongside the Top Grossing chart – which is currently stuffed with larger firms’ games. The company’s latest presentation is embedded below.

Gameloft tops the Paid list – 78% of its releases were hits by this standard – followed by EA Mobile (76%), Pangea Software (73%), Gogo Apps (71%), Glu Mobile (71%) and Bootant.com (67%). The average large developer – defined as one that launched more than 10 apps – has a score of 9%.

Turner Broadcasting tops the Top Grossing chart with a 57% hit rate, followed by EA (54%), Agile Partners (50%), Gameloft (46%) and Sega America (43%). Some interesting number crunching for sure.

The company posted a GAAP net loss of $6.9 million for the quarter, but says it was cash positive from operations. Glu says it will double its studio capacity for smartphone games in 2010, while focusing on own-IP games – including a category of massively multiplayer social games pitched as combining the best bits of Farmville and World of Warcraft.

Glu also says it’s generated more than 20 million iPhone downloads of its paid and free games, although in 2009 as a whole, it only made $2 million from the App Store.

Five of the top 20 are own-IP, while 15 are based on existing brands. Only two of the 20 Top Grossing games cost £0.59. The sweet spot seems to be £3.99, with eight of the top 20 at that price point. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars holds onto the top spot, followed by Rock Band.

Meanwhile, in the 20 Top Paid Games chart, the average price is £1.65, down from £1.83 last week. New entries include Mousebreaker’s Blast Billiards Touch, 1337 Game Design’s Dark Nebula, Tapulous’ Riddim Ribbon, Gameloft’s GT Racing: Motor Academy, Chillingo’s Cogs and Isayonline Services’ 60 Mario and Friends.

The latter’s inclusion is puzzling – not only is it more of a soundboard app than a game, but it’s seemingly infringing Nintendo’s copyrights. Doodle Jump is still the top paid game in the UK App Store. Charts will follow below imminently.

Of those, nearly three quarters are targeting iPhone and iPod touch specifically, showing the impact that the App Store has made (but also the increasing competition on Apple’s store). iPhone is attracting twice as many developers as Nintendo’s DS and Sony PSP – a stat that Apple may seize on to trumpet its platform’s superiority.

However, there’s a quantity/quality argument here, not to mention the business concerns for developers flocking to the App Store, then having expensively-produced flops. Even so, the survey shows iPhone’s continuing rise in prominence within the wider games industry.

“We had seven of the top eleven games in December for iPhone and four of the top five selling games for 2009,” said CFO Eric Brown in the company’s earnings call. “EA had seven of the top ten games on Verizon for the quarter and achieved over 50% of the top ten games on AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile.”

The company did not break out how much money it made on iPhone specifically, unlike rival Gameloft. However, there’s no doubt that EA Mobile has pulled ahead in recent months. Last week, Gameloft revealed its own Q4 sales, posting revenues of €31.8 million ($43.7 million) and €122 million ($167.5 million) for 2009 as a whole.

The figures came in a report looking at wider use of the mobile internet. One of the headline findings was that more than 60% of people surveyed said they ignore their operator’s portal, preferring to access the mobile sites of big web brands like Facebook and Amazon.

“Mobile network operators and handset manufacturers are losing the battle to define the mobile Internet experience, despite the huge sums they’re pouring into sites that compete with the familiar Web names,” says co-author Martin Garner.

BlackBerry devices take half the slots in the chart, showing RIM’s strength in the US. The full list:

1. BlackBerry Curve
2. iPhone 3GS
3. Motorola Droid
4. iPhone 3G
5. BlackBerry Pearl
6. BlackBerry Bold
7. BlackBerry Storm
8. Palm Pre
9. BlackBerry Tour
10. myTouch 3G

Focusing on the 20 Top Grossing Games and 20 Top Paid Games charts specifically, the average price of a Top Grossing game is $4.84, compared to $2.14 for the Top Paid games. There are 13 games selling for $0.99 in the Top 20 Paid Games chart, but just three in the Top 20 Grossing Games chart – Doodle Jump, All-in-1 Gamebox and Skee-Ball.

Brands continue to dominate the Top Grossing Games chart, with only three own-IP titles in the Top 20 – Doodle Jump, All-in-1 Gamebox and Riddim Ribbon (the latter of which is closely identified with the Black Eyed Peas, so does have a brand attached). By contrast, 11 games in the Top 20 Paid Games are own-IP.

Meanwhile, three quarters of the top 20 grossing games are from established publishers, with just five from independent developers. EA Mobile continues to be top dog on iPhone when it comes to revenues, with an impressive eight of the 20 top grossing games on the App Store.

Today’s US App Store charts are embedded below.

Q4 was particularly strong, with 54.5 million smartphones shipped – up 39% year-on-year. “To help address demand, carriers took advantage of lower prices on many older devices, ordering additional units and, in turn, offering reduced prices to end users,” says analyst Ramon Llamas. “It was the perfect set of conditions to push shipments to a record level.”

IDC predicts that 2010 will be a record year for smartphone sales – not a surprising forecast – fuelled by new versions of the Symbian and Windows Mobile operating systems joining the competition between iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Palm’s webOS.

Nokia was the leading smartphone firm in 2009, shipping 67.7 million units for a 38.9% market share. It was followed by Research In Motion (34.5m units / 19.8% market share); Apple (25.1m / 14.4%); HTC (8.1m / 4.6%) and Samsung (5.7m / 3.3%) – with other vendors shipping 33.1 million smartphones for a 19% market share.

Full tables and stats can be found here.