Last year’s top iPhone game, Angry Birds, has been knocked out by Bubble Ball, which has grabbed the first position in the mist of top free apps.  To add to the “wow” factor around this development, Bubble Ball has been created by a 14-year old boy, Robert Nay, an eighth grader in Spanish Fork, Utah, and his mother Kari. The game is experiencing a huge number of downloads–ever since its launch on December 29, it has been downloaded 1.5 million times.

As Bubble Ball becomes the top free app, the top paid app is still Angry Birds.  While this new leader was made by just an eighth grader, Angry Birds employed a  team at Helsinki-based Rovio with over 12 employees. This clearly shows that being clever about app development has its benefits, when you’re not large in size.

Nay used tools like Corona SDK from Ansca Mobile to create the app that lets users create graphically rich applications and games for the iPhone, iPad and Android. He did the programming work while his mother helped in  the design. He started creating Bubble Balls in November, and completed in just a month or so.  As of now, the app is available only on iPhone, but not Android.

On the other hand, Angry Birds is spreading its wings to Playstation 3 and PlayStation Portable. It is currently available both on iPhone and Android. This spread of mobile apps to gaming consoles is particularly relevant for growth aspect.