subject: Is It Time To Make Your Own Unique Cell Phone Apps? [print this page] The cell phone apps market is massive - more people have cell phones than have personal computers - and the diversity of what people want to do with their smart phones easily matches what they do on their computers.
So, if you reckon yourself as being pretty clued up with technology, maybe you want to see if you can tap into that market, and start making web apps for sale to others. Looking at what many of the applications do, the programming looks like it could be a relatively simple task- most phone applications are much less complex than computer programs.
For the current generation of Blackberry's, iPhones and Win Mo based phones, there definitely is a good prospect of a well thought out, and developed, web app making it big, The market for a useful phone app is massive.
The good thing here is that these are established cell phones, with millions of users worldwide, and so your customer base is going to be massive. The draw back is that to make a web app on the iPhone, for instance, requires a pretty high level of programming skill.
Additionally you must become an affiliated developer with the company that makes the platform (Microsoft, Apple etc), and then get hold of their software development kit. You will find that these are pretty well loaded with features to help you make you app.
Once the app is developed, you will still have to submit to the platform vendor for approval of your web app for your target phone. Doable, but not a quick process.
The alternative? Build your own applications for your phone . This has now become a reality thanks to Google and their Android operating system, It has a tool called App Inventor which opens up the creation of apps even to non developers. This has the potential to revolutionize the market in cell phone apps.
