Apple’s latest device is driving lucrative demand for applications that take advantage of its larger screen
GILLIAN SHAW
Sun
A gold mine or a lottery? That’s the question as British Columbia developers join the rush to deliver applications for Apple’s newly released iPad.
Some applications can make the shift from iPhone to iPad seamlessly but the larger device is also driving lucrative demand for applications tailor-made to take advantage of its larger screen and other features.
Vancouver’s Atimi Software was among the first out of the gate with several apps in Apple’s iTunes app store for the iPad in time for its launch last Saturday.
“ We have three more that are under production right now,” said Atimi vice-president Scott Michaels. “ We are doing the i Pad version for HBO, an app that is not available in Canada .
“ We did an iPhone version for them this year that did really well so we’re doing an iPad one. We’re also doing another for a major TV broadcaster and another in the health space.” The launch of the iPhone and Apple’s app store has proven lucrative for Atimi.
“ It went from being zero per cent of our business to 60 per cent of our revenue in just two years and it caused us to grow as a company,” said Michaels. “ We have a staff of 65 now, when the app store first launched we had 40 to 45 people.”
Michaels said the real gold rush was when the app store first launched and had only a few thousand apps.
“ I think the gold rush time was actually at the beginning of the app store,” he said. “ You could be a small store and actually get noticed.
“ I think of it like a lottery win at this point, it takes good solid effort now and the price to win a category [ be the most popular app] has only gone up.”
While iPhone apps can be put on the iPad and there are more than 150,000 apps in the store, there are only several thousand apps — estimates put it around 3,000 — that have been specifically created for the iPad.
“ The price for productivity applications is substantially higher for the iPad than for ones on the iPhone,” said Michaels. Productivity applications for the iPhone — ones that let you write, edit and create presentations — can cost between $ 5 and $ 12, he said.
“ On the iPad that same application will be between $ 20 and $ 40 but it will also have substantially more features.”
Andrei Iancu does see the arrival of the iPad as a potential gold mine for application developers. He teaches iPhone app development at the British Columbia Institute of Technology and his upcoming spring course will add iPad development to the agenda.
“ Everybody wants to be on board with what Apple is bringing in,” said Iancu, whose company Dynamic Leap Technology helps companies create their own iPhone and iPad apps. “ It is like the dot-com boom when everybody became a web developer but not everybody was a good developer.
“ This is a gold rush. What I’m doing here is selling boots and shovels instead of trying to look for gold. That’s why I’m teaching.”
John McIntosh stayed up all night racing to meet Apple’s deadline to get his iPad application ready for the app store in time for the launch of the new device.
He made it and was rewarded by seeing his iPad application in the iTunes store on the April 3 launch day of the iPad.
His first submission is Scratch, an iPad version of an app he already created for the iPhone. Scratch is a programming language that lets children create their own interactive stories, animations and other projects.
“ When Apple announced the iPad we took a look at that and thought there was a really interesting opportunity to build some stuff for that,” said McIntosh, a developer who works from his North Saanich home on Vancouver Island.
McIntosh also has a second app in the iTunes store, his Wiki Server Pro, a fully fledged wiki for the iPad. He said Apple has made it easy for developers to get their applications to the market, a factor that is helping fuel the rapid growth of applications.
“ As a programmer and developer Apple has made it extremely easy for us to sit down and build an application, get it out and sell it,” he said. “ My friend in L. A. who was involved in selling education software for desktop machines, they got pennies on the dollar — once the people did the packaging, the boxes, the distributor in the middle, the store and they also had to front all the money to pay for all that.
“ Apple’s model is completely different — you basically come up with an app, submit it to Apple and once it goes into the store Apple takes 30 per cent but they give you the other 70 per cent.
“ It makes it extremely easy for you to get iPhone or iPad apps out to millions of people around the world.”
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun