Mobile analytics company Flurry has released a new study that reveals the size of the iPhone App Store, particularly in gaming. Gaming is the largest category in the App Store with 30,000 various game titles available to iPhone and iPod touch users. According to Flurry, approximately $500 million worth of games were sold in 2009. That’s up from $115 million in 2008. The report also suggests that the iPhone OS took away 5% market share from the overall US console and portable gaming market.

In the portable gaming market alone, the iPhone OS as a platform grew even more aggressively against the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS. The market share for the iPhone OS went up from 5% in 2008 to 19% in 2009. The Apple platform took 9% market share from the Sony PSP and brought its market share down from 20% to 11% in the 2008-2009 period. Similarly, Nintendo DS saw its market share drop from 75% to 70%, giving away 5% to the iPhone OS.

Needless to say, the iPhone/iPod touch combo as gaming devices are growing rapidly, which Apple realizes well. That’s why they pitched the 3rd-generation iPod touch as a gaming device rather than an all purpose entertainment device late last year at their annual iPod refresh event.