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This week is probably one of the biggest week for game developers because the Game Developer Conference (GDC) 2009 is happening in San Francisco.

There are the usual suspects present at the conference: Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft – beating the drums around their respective game consoles. Nintendo announced the North America availability of the DSi, Sony announced that they are going to push hard on downloadable games for PSP, and Microsoft announced new features for their game developer tools. But something smells different at GDC this year.

Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch has become an important gaming platform. EA announced that they are bringing over 10 of its major franchises to the iPhone/iPod Touch platform. The titles include SSX, Red Alert, FIFA 10, NBA Live 10, American Idol, Spore Creatures, Clue, Risk, Tiger Woods and Star Trek. If you haven’t gone to EA’s website lately, you will notice that it now has the iPhone/iPod Touch listed as one of its gaming platforms, next to big dogs like PS3, XBOX 360, Nintendo Wii, etc. Apple is not only winning market share in the SmartPhone market, but it is also competing against Nintendo and Sony in the handheld gaming market. Nokia tried to move into the mobile gaming space a couple of years ago (and is still trying) with its NGAGE, but it was (is) a spectacular failure.

iPhone and iPod Touch titles are also dominating in the list of IGF (Independent Games Festival) Awards this year. It’s not a big wonder that Apple’s platform has quickly become game developers’ preferred target platform, because of its low cost of entry. $99 gets you into Apple’s Developer’s Program, whereas traditionally, SDK’s and developer programs with console makers cost thousands of dollars. Suddenly, almost everyone can try and write games for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The Mobile gaming market has hit $5.4 billion in 2008 [source: Jupiter Research], and is expected to have a 24.6% compounded annual growth rate through 2012 [source: CSMG]. Little wonder that game makers, both large and small, are swarming to the iPhone and iPod Touch. It looks like Apple is going to do pretty well with a growing mobile gaming market. A quick check of the App Store today shows that 9 out of the top 10 paid apps are games.

So what games are you playing? Of course, if you are not only about games and want to be more productive with your iPhone, you can always download Skratch List.