Football season is upon us again and with it comes the need for score updates, player stats, rosters, and other information hardcore fans want in the palm of their hands. For iPhone users, you’ve got tons of options when it comes to apps. Whether you just want to check score updates or check on your favorite fantasy football league. Follow along for our top picks.

ESPN ScoreCenter

ScoreCenter is by far one of the most popular sports apps in the App Store. Not only does it contain support for NFL but other sports as well. You can follow your favorite teams and choose to receive push notifications for a variety of different things. You can set alerts for individual games or for a whole season which is nice for people who may not want updates for games they’re able to watch. They can just set them for games they know they’re going to miss.

I like the fact that ScoreCenter allows you to follow all your teams and see a brief summary in one place. If you just want to check scores and stats quickly you won’t have to dig around. But you have the option to see more detailed information if you want to.

ScoreCenter is a free download in the App Store.

[Free - App Store Link]

ESPN Fantasy Football 2011

For those of you that take part in fantasy football leagues, ESPN also offers an app for fantasy leagues as well. You’ll need to already have a fantasy league to use this app but once you have one, you can use the app to manage the following aspects of your fantasy league –

• Start, bench, add, or drop players
• Accept or reject trades
• Receive push notifications for scores, substitutions, and trades

The app also allows you to view fantasy league news as well. It’s also a free download in the App Store.

[Free - App Store Link]

Pro Football Insider

If you want to view more than just stats, scores, rosters, and rankings – you may prefer Pro Football Insider. It contains not only the information you’d expect but thousands of video clips, updated news and rumors, and even more.

One thing I really found interesting about this app over the others was the integrated Twitter feed which aggregates Twitter postings from not only industry experts but players themselves.

If you’re a Pro Football Insider subscriber you’ll also have access to even more premium content that the free app doesn’t provide. This is an app any hardcore football fan will want to pick up.

[Free - App Store Link]

NFL ’11

While I didn’t find NFL ’11 to be as in depth as some of the other picks, the ease of use and simple to navigate interface somewhat makes up for that. If you need an app that will give you up to date game information along with player stats, rosters, and statistics – NFL ’11 should suit you well.

You can customize alerts for teams and games just as you can in some of the other popular apps such as ESPN ScoreCenter. NFL ’11 also offers integration with their NFL.com Fantasy Football 2011 service and app. Most fantasy football fans I talked to seemed to prefer the ESPN fantasy app better but if you prefer the NFL fantasy app, this pairing may be a better option for you.

[Free - App Store Link]

NFL Fantasy Cheat Sheet 2011

Here’s another app fantasy football leaguers will definitely want to check out. Not only does it aggregate up to date NFL news, standings, and charts – it’s one of the better apps out there for managing your fantasy leagues.

Out of the apps I checked out for fantasy football fans, this app seemed to have the best user interface by far. You can quickly view profiles and stats by simply swiping left and right. Other apps sometimes left stats buried and harder to get to. This app is put together exceptionally well and will make managing your content easier than ever.

Some of the main features of the app include the following and much, much more –

• Custom rankings based on your league scoring system
• 2011 projections and stats based on data from 2007 – 2010
• Team depth charts
• Rank players manually
• Draft player tracking

[$2.99 - App Store Link]

While these may be some of our favorite apps to load up on our iOS devices during football season, it doesn’t mean there aren’t other great ones out there. If you use something different let us know what your picks are as well. Special thanks to ‎@jlew0451, @EckStrm, @Wrnglr, and everyone else who helped out by telling us their favorite football apps!

And if you want even more suggestions on football or NFL apps, check out our TiPb apps & games forum for more opinions from forum members. You can also give us your opinions on your favorite sports apps in our TiPb apps & games review forum. We’d love to hear from you!

Millennial Media’s July Mobile Mix report shows that while iOS is still dominant, Android is coming on like a freight train. Millenial’s stats are also one of the few ways to see what’s trending outside the increasingly closed worlds of Google- and Apple-assimilated and controlled ad networks. Here’s the breakdown:

• iOS was the platform utilized 100% of the time by multi-platform developers on Millenial’s network. Android was second with 75% and RIM in the third position with nearly half developing for their platform.
• iOS remained the leading OS on our Millenial’s network in July with a 55% share of impressions.
• Apple ad requests are up 24% month-over-month, 15% since January.
• iPad ad requests grew 327% month-over-month.
• Android OS grew another 47% month-over-month. Since January, Android has grown 690%. Android also officially became the number two OS on the Millennial network (surpassing RIM)

One more chart after the break…

Anyone surprised that games are way more popular on the iPhone than on competing plaforms? Mplayit has put out some interesting stats, not only on what apps are popular with their Facebook sharing users, but what kinds of apps are popular on the various platforms they monitor. While on Android and BlackBerry, non-game apps account for 83% and 67% of popular titles, on the iPhone they’re only 36%. That leaves 64% for games.

That might be a concern, frankly, if the numbers weren’t north of 150,000 leaving plenty of room for great productivity, utility, social networking, and other apps in addition to the increasingly good games. Embarrassment of riches indeed.

Check out the graphic above for the full breakdown. Time for Android and BlackBerry to get their game on, or does Apple really enjoy the lead Steve Jobs keeps saying they do?

Dan Moren at Macworld quotes the figures:

In a post on the YouTube blog product manager Dwipal Desai and community manager Mia Quagliarello say that the number of videos uploaded to the sharing site from mobile phones has jumped 400 percent a day since the iPhone 3GS’s release last Friday.

As part of an overall 1700% increase year to date, you don’t have to be Oliva Munn and Kevin Peirera (NSFW-L) to know how much the quick and easy shooting and uploading of video to YouTube via the iPhone 3GS will continue to push that. Truth be told, we think Apple just unleashed a TMZ-style hurting on reckless celebrities and unfortunate public fool-of-themselves’ers like the world ain’t never seen before.

Little brother indeed.

Apple Insider reports that, based on a Piper Jaffray survey:

12% of consumers who visited a retail store this past weekend to make their iPhone 3G S purchase said they were replacing a BlackBerry handset, the latest sign that Apple continues to make headway against rival Research in Motion in the high-stakes smartphone market.

28% of iPhone 3GS said buh-bye to their old carriers and hello to AT&T as well, proving once again just how valuable the iPhone is to new customer acquisition…

What a great start to 2009! Net Applications (a leader in tracking website applications) has just released their monthly survey for January 2009. The news? The iPhone accounts for 0.48% of all Internet traffic! This is amazing considering that the Mac has 9.93%. Compared to one month ago, the iPhone”s share of Internet traffic has grown by 9.09%.

This is quite an achievement for the iPhone since it is only available on one carrier in the use and limited to one model. What is particularly interesting about this is that Windows Mobile, Google’s G1, Symbian and BlackBerry are rolled together into the “other” category that accounts for 0.45% of Internet traffic. 

(via Apple 2.0)

Interested in knowing what apps are being bought at the App Store? Well, lucky you, Medialets has estimates for your viewing pleasure. To determine demand, Medialets uses the number of ratings each app has and also takes into account the average rating of an app as well. So though it may not be the most accurate measurement, it’s still a fairly good barometer in determining app popularity.

So what rules the App Store? FREE. According to Medialets, 9 out of the top 10 most rated apps are FREE with the one exception being Super Monkey Ball. The usual suspects populate the top 10 list with the Remote, AIM, Facebook, etc. having the most ratings and more importantly, all entirely free.

Also, it looks like the best-selling apps are games which further proves that there is a market for iPhone gaming. Simple math concludes that Sega has already hit $5 million in sales for the first weekend. Though iPhone users tend to want free apps, it looks like they have no problem laying down the cash for good games.

Feel free to click over to Medialets to see the list for yourself. Do you think it’s accurate? Are apps on the top 10 all on your iPhone? Let us know!

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