The Top 15 Brands on the App Store Might Surprise You

Brands are increasingly prominent on the App Store and Apple tends to love featuring folks like Britney Spears and Coca-Cola on the App Store’s front page. But who’s actually succeeding and which brands have managed to maintain high download numbers?

PositionApp, the app that lets you track how iPhone apps are doing on the App Store rankings, might have the answer. They track and record the top 300 apps across all demographics and have provided us with details on the top 15 apps in the US App Store. Hit the jump for the list.

The first two apps, Facebook and Pandora, are clear favorites and there’s no real surprise there. But then it gets a bit tricky. Somehow, Driver’s Ed.com and Gibson Learn and Master Guitar are the next two. Though valuable applications (or so it seems), it’s intriguing that folks like Disney and Comcast are managing to take a back seat to lesser known brands.

Of course, there are plenty of high-quality brands on here. Companies like eBay, MySpace, Bank of America and PayPal are all doing quite well, and have managed to sustain their high position for at least 4 weeks.

Ultimately, it’s hard to figure out from this list what exactly makes a branded app successful, though one thing’s for sure: brands have started to consume the iPhone and pretty much everyone has to have an “iPhone” strategy. Success definitely seems indirectly related to providing value, as applications like Facebook / The Weather Channel and Paypal show.

So what do you think? How did these apps become successful as compared to the hundreds of other equally popular brands who created apps that flopped?