Zynga has released Farmville for Apple's iPad.  The free app has been customized to take advantage of the iPad’s larger screen and touch interface, letting players zoom in and out to view their farms, harvest crops, or drive tractors with the tap of a finger. Push notifications alert iPad users to their crops' status.

Too Few Apps Being Downloaded

The app comes to iTunes just as Nielsen has released a report [pfd] looking at the unexpectedly high number of people that don't download apps onto their iPads.  The study, called "The Increasingly Connected Consumer: Connected Devices," showed that more than one-third of polled iPad owners have never downloaded an app and only 5% downloaded free apps. Of course that also means the majority of iPad owners do download apps - 63% and they are willing to pay for it, with games, books and music the main areas. However, given that the iPad was designed for walled-off consumption of content - i.e. apps - some analysts have expressed surprise that 32% of owners have not yet downloaded at least one app.

It may be that a game is not the best category of app to drive more adoption - if the hints that social gaming may begin to peak are valid.

Concerns are growing that users will become fatigued from constantly being asked to buy additional in-game items. Also, "economic factors could affect the future of social gaming, and consumer behavior remains an unknown," says Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the  report, "Social Gaming: Virtual Crops Yield Real Profits." (via eMarketer). "Playing addictive games that simulate farms, restaurants or mob families could be a long-term business proposition, but it could also be the ultimate fad," he said. "If interest in these types of activities evaporates as quickly as it materialized, the social gaming industry could experience the same plunge as happened with virtual worlds."