Apple has once again demonstrated its precedence for creativity and innovation by launching next generation mobile Phone, the IPhone. Mobile phones once considered luxury have become an integral part of our daily life. Smart phones like Black Berry, IPhone, and Android intend to take mobile phone to next level by positioning them barely as communication device but as portable computing devices. No wonder the change is coupled with advancements and adaption of wireless internet technology. However, the impact of this innovation has transformed our daily lifestyle. No longer we use mobile phones for only staying connected, but we also use it for more trivial tasks including searching web, regularly checking emails, internet messaging, and conducting business transformation. This now allows people to be more connected to their work-life, businesses and the “world”.

The shift to portable computing device has provided an opportunity for enhancing productivity and reliability of businesses. For widespread usage, Apple recently launched App Store, building a marketplace for IPhone native application. As of today, numerous applications are available over Apple store in various categories including business, productivity, sports, games, etc. Though, numerous smart phones existed before: however IPhone touch concept and creative browser simply enhanced the experience resulting in mass adaption to concept.

IPhone applications are not only useful for enhancing personal productivity, but also have widespread usage in business automation application. Let me share few applications that can help enhance sales force automation. We understand various giants like Siebel, http://SalesForce.com, Sugar CRM are providing sales force automation solution etc. Still, IPhone based CRM solution are gaining mass appeal for its ability to further assist sales force in recording sales activity sheet at spot. Instant recording assists in increasing accuracy of reporting, and provide more updated sales view to management. Not only, this will provide quick information for sales managers, but also help sales managers do complex sales territory analysis utilizing GPS based feature. The GPS based sales automation system will not only help in making optimized sales territory allocation, but also more acceptable incentive based pay system. Long story cut short, IPhone present a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs. The opportunities exist for enhancing personal productivity by building applications for track shipments, manage personal finance, manage shopping list, arrange to-do, take personal notes and interact with friends near by.

IPhone applications can be served using standard web-interface or native application. Native application provides more control allowing features including offline access, GPS feature, Accelerometer and access to SQL-lite. Native application can be downloaded from Apple Store. Apple store hosts free as well as paid applications. To evaluate consumer preferences it would be helpful to review few top rated applications. iBowl is most famous IPhone application at apple store, available free of cost to download. The application simulates the bowling experience using accelerometer technology. User can swing the IPhone as a ball, and click on throw button, pushing the ball with the force of the swing. Though the application only measures force and does not take angle into consideration, but still its most highly rated application. The application is not only famous amongst youngsters but also amongst adults. No wonder, the application has just opened a whole new set of opportunities for innovative games, measuring hand gestures.

As opposed to native applications, browser based applications are usual HTML pages optimized for small screens. A large number of web pages are optimized for IPhone. Recently many social networking applications have been optimized for IPhone, including facebook. Facebook application is available both as native as well as HTML version. IPhone , web based interface, is optimized for small screen device like IPhone. The application heavily use custom animations i.e. page moving flying from right to left. The safari browser within IPhone does provide very good Ajax support and custom components.

Despite the global economic recession significant investments are made to transforming applications to Smart phones mainly IPhone. A definite analogy can be made to early transformation of desktop based applications to Web in late 90′s. Analyst feels that, similar to past trend, in late 2000′ all web applications are transformed for Mobile. The transformation has great opportunity for budding entrepreneurs as simple IPhone application can be developed for only 10K US $ , with a significant expected return on investment.

Apparently simple looking IPhone applications require sophisticated process to ensure maximum success. In a highly competitive growing market, the success of any application heavily relies on idea. We suggest that due efforts should be put in evaluating idea by doing quick environment scan, competitive analysis and understanding customer needs. Once satisfied, the next step is to build requirement specification / user interface design. You must hire a user experience developer, familiar with IPhone development guidelines, to build design. The user interface will assist investors, innovators, and potential customers visualize product and provide early feedback. Then you should hire IPhone Application developer, who can build IPhone application faster, better and obviously cheaper for you. There are many companies which specialize in building IPhone applications. Please ensure to find register for Apple developer license for 99 US $ , as it shall ensure in tracking payments and ensuring intellectual copyrights.

Google Tech Talks October 14, 2008 ABSTRACT Apple’s iPhone has resulted in significant interest from users and developers alike. Apple’s SDK for the iPhone is based on Objective-C as the development language as well as Cocoa for the GUI. Unfortunately Apple’s license agreement for the iPhone SDK prohibits the porting of the Java virtual machine to the iPhone. In this presentation we introduce an Open Source Java-to-Objective-C cross-compiler as well as a Java-based implementation of the Cocoa library. With the help of these tools, iPhone applications can be written in pure Java. Using the Java version of Cocoa, it is possible to run a Java-based iPhone application as a Java desktop/applet application that can be cross-compiled to run natively on the iPhone. The talk will discuss the challenges of the Java-to-Objective-C cross-compiler as well as the Java-based version of Cocoa. Details are available at www.xmlvm.org Speaker: Arno Puder Arno Puder is an Associate Professor at the San Francisco State University. Prior to his current position, he worked for AT Labs Research. His interests include middleware, ubiquitous computing, and applications for sensor networks. He is one of the founders of the Open Source CORBA implementation called MICO.
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