On the heels of Apple’s iPad announcement, we released a survey that underscores iPhone users’ strong interest in mobile games as compared to Android and BlackBerry users on our Arcades.

With games making up only 20 percent of the over 130,000 iPhone apps available on Mplayit, nearly 50 percent of the site traffic centered on games. Among Android users, only 20 percent of browsing focused on gaming applications. Even BlackBerry users are more fun-loving than Android users, with about 30 percent of activity coming from the games category.

iPhone developers are driving this phenomenon, putting out simply fantastic games that get people excited, but the ‘developer catch up’ is underway on Android. And although Blackberry is renowned for apps, it continues to be underrated and overlooked as a games platform.

Our users can rate, comment and recommend individual apps to their social network on Facebook and Twitter, in addition to browsing friends’ app collections and following their interests.

Our findings were drawn from live data collected from over 50,000 users on our Facebook app store over a two week period ending January 29, highlights the kinds of games that were popular for each of the three major smartphone audiences.

The most active game categories on all three platforms were largely identical: Arcade, Casual, Card/Casino and Puzzle. However, there were some significant differences in taste across platforms.

Music games were particularly popular on the iPhone, befitting its media-centric iPod heritage. Android users showed a predilection toward ‘geeky’ games making innovative use of things like the GPS, camera and augmented reality. The BlackBerry audience gravitated toward television and movie tie-ins.

There were also some significant commercial differences. BlackBerry users stuck with major franchises and larger publishers, reflecting perhaps the carrier-centric history of the device. Indie developers hold their own against the big games publishers on the iPhone, and continue to dominate the Android’s relatively immature market.

Intense competition on the iPhone makes it increasingly hard for apps to surface. Android is a less crowded, even playing field that we expect will grow and grow quickly.