There are hundreds of thousands of apps available for the iPhone that are considered secure and very useful. Although awesome to download, some of these apps are for purchase with corresponding price tags.

As iOS expands with other device sizes and types, apps are also optimised to work with iPads that used to be available to iPhones only. This partial listing of best iPad apps for 2012 is based on reviews, comments, functionality and costs of these apps.

Best iPad Book App: Kindle

Developed by Amazon with no cost to use, this app is the best library for reading with downloads ranging from books, magazines, literature, and more. It is also the most comprehensive reading app available.

Best iPad Business App: OmniPlan

This project planning app was developed by the Omnigroup and costs £34.99, which is pretty expensive for an app. The app features change tracking, publish and subscribe, smart scheduling, friendly interface, data-sharing capacity, easy task management, resource allocation, visual timelines and resource load sharing.

Best iPad Education App: Learnist

Grockist developed this app and it allows a user to self-learn by browsing or creating learning boards. The learning boards include media and text from different sources to give all needed information. Learnist has broad sorts of topics available and is free to download from iTunes.

Best iPad Entertainment App: Netflix

Free to download from iTunes and developed by Netflix Inc, this app offers the best range of TV for a monthly payment. The app offers multiple seasons from a lot of great shows and movies, old or new. The winning factor of this app is the tracking place of shows across platforms.

Best iPad Finance App: Account Tracker

Account tracker keeps spending and balance over multiple accounts in check. The app also supports multiple currencies, alerts if the accounts go overdrawn, search for transactions, and export information for sending or analysis later. Graham Haley developed Account Tracker which costs £1.99 in iTunes.

Best iPad Food & Drink App: Jamie's Recipes

For users who want to recall recipes or want to learn more, this app offers a bunch of recipes for free. The app features easy-to-follow instructions, beautiful images, and searching options. The app also allows adding ingredients for grocery list and syncs to an iPhone. The paid version offers more recipe contents. Zolmo developed this app for iTunes which can be downloaded for free.

Best iPad Gaming App: Hero Academy

Hero Academy is developed by Robot Entertainment and it is a turn-based strategy game for mobile hardcore gaming. The game uses the chess-like board scene for the characters and provides turn between the user and the opponents. It is free to download from iTunes.

Best iPad Health & Fitness App: Runtastic PushUps Pro

Runtastic is designed to push the limits to develop fitness and strength with the use of training regimes, motivation during workouts, and storing information on how well the results are in each day.

Best iPad Lifestyle App: Amazon Windowshop

Developed by Amazon.com Inc., Amazon Windowshop features easy-to-browse selection for quick flick of what's offered. The app shows the selection in several categories, grid view, and divided columns differentiating product type. Purchase can also be done through this app.

This is just a partial list. Watch out for more best iPad apps in 2012 in the coming days.

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