iPhone development has created a huge business opportunity for many companies, and the possibilities are only increasing with the announcement of the iPad and constantly improving software. Part of this business involves not only developing applications, but also helping other people develop applications in an easy, hassle-free way. Two companies trying to do this, SachManya and SelfServeApplications, have recently announced new products for this very task.
YAPPER
The product coming out of SachManya—a company founded by some Apple veterans—is called YAPPER (Your APP makER) and allows users to create native iPhone and Android apps in minutes. For the introductory price of only $99 ($499 as of February 20th), which is equivalent to what you’d have to pay for a license, you will have access to a WYSIWYG editor that supports multiple languages and only requires four steps to make an application. However, as their site claims, the product is “an online self-service for bloggers, newspapers, pod casters,” meaning it’s limited to RSS feed type applications.
That said, they claim to use content caching for online reading as well as fast RSS parsing, so I’m sure they do it pretty well.
You can check out what they have to offer at the YAPPER homepage.
iPhone App Builder
Focusing strictly on the iPhone market and targeting a different audience is SelfServeApps’ iPhone App Builder. This company currently charges from $99 (USD) for setup and $29 monthly to $499 for setup and $99 monthly, but offers a multiple project dashboard and content management system behind the scenes to help keep your applications more up to date.
Furthermore, their primary market is “web developers, ad agencies, PR firms and other creative companies” who want to offer their apps as a service to their customers on top of what they already do without having to take the time to hire a programmer or learn how to code. “One of our motivations is to help local and regional operators compete with large corporations with a low cost, high quality app,” said Doug Pelton, CEO and founder of SelfServeApps.
You can discover what they are all about at their site as well.
It seems a promising iphone app. I will definitely try this one. Thank you for sharing it.
At our company, BigForge.com, we've worked to build a platform that gives the non-coder access to specific phone features that you wouldn't get from a web application. We've also built an engine and process so that not everyone has to submit an app to the app store to get the full "iphone app experience". Our approach is a good middle ground for the masses, but for the truly customized solutions, we offer reduced development time and a well tested infrastructure to maintain and support the app. That's really the added value of many of the app builders, and those features will determine which app builder companies become viable businesses, and which just churn out business card applications.
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Fantastic resource for branded apps is Nov8rix http://www.nov8rix.com. FAst, html friendly, and excellent for iPhone and Android. TUAW reviewed: http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7712195&postID=2163388422733548139&page=0&token=1314129046804