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Do-it-yourself apps

Make your own Angry Birds

from the print edition | Business

Page 1


Do-it-yourself apps

from the print edition | Business

Page 2


Do-it-yourself apps
DIY is hot. In May Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry, unveiled a kit that
allows people with no programming skills to create a working app within minutes. Apple,
too, has applied for a patent indicating it is also building a DIY tool for iOS, its mobile
operating system. And in March the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a
beta version of App Inventor, which allows even simpletons to make apps for Android
phones.
Several start-ups already offer DIY
app services. Conduit, a firm which was
valued at $1.3 billion after J.P. Morgan
acquired a 7% stake for $100m earlier this
year, allows people to build mobile apps
themselves with a simple graphical
interface. AppMakr, a similar service, has
helped to create some 10,000 apps. Users

include individuals, small businesses and the Harvard Business Review. AppMakr also
offers its users help in bringing apps up to standard before submitting them to Apple’s
picky App Store. Other services publish to Android and Windows, or bypass Apple
altogether by creating web apps.
Custom-made apps can cost $10,000 or more. By contrast, DIY apps are
free to create, with a subscription for continued support. Prices vary,
typically from about $30 to $80 a month. Magmito, an app-building service
that targets small and medium businesses, has a plan that costs as little as
$50 a year. AppMakr offers a free, ad-supported service.
The democratisation of technology is not without drawbacks. Apple’s App Store already
has some 550,000 apps. Google offers 450,000 for download on its Android operating
system. The coming deluge of apps made by amateurs will see those numbers swell.
Not all will shine. “There’s a lot of garbage on YouTube. But once in a while you
find a gem and everybody passes it around,” says Ted Iannuzzi of Magmito. Professional
app-makers may not be shaking in their boots just yet. But the clever ones, like AppMakr,
are moving from creating stuff for mobile phones to creating the stuff that creates the
stuff for mobile phones. App-creating software could be the machine tools of the mobile
world.

from the print edition | Business

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