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(Graphic: Anand Parthasarathy)

The iPhone App Store featuring applications by Indians.

Anand Parthasarathy

Bangalore Aug. 25 It was inevitable that the huge opportunity presented by the global launch of Apple’s 3G iPhone - and the hunger of owners for compelling applications that would exploit the highly graphical and user-friendly platform - would be seen by Indian developers as both challenge and opportunity.

Apple has shrewdly made a software development kit (SDK) for the new iPhone avatar freely available to prospective software developers, so that they would create an ecosystem around the iconic smart phone product.

Some Indian players such as the Udipi ( Karnataka)-based Robosoft, who have been long time Apple developers, offer expertise to other creative people to turn their clever ideas into workable applications for the iPhone, especially in the burgeoning business of casual games.

Engineers of the Bangalore, San Francisco and New York-based mobile application developer AirMe have placed a new tool (also called AirMe) on the iPhone Application site for free download.

It allows iPhone users to take photos with the phone - then instantly tag’ them ( i.e. include full references to the place where the pictures were taken, using the built -in GPS system) and upload them, ready-formatted to social networking sites such as Flickr or Facebook.

“It’s all about sharing, in the moment”, says AirMe’s founder, Mr Apoorva Ruparel.

A Hyderabad,US and Hong Kong -based product company, QueTech, has offered iPhone users a canny mix of voice and data. ReQall is an application that helps you recall important items in your life: dates, addresses, names and whatever.

You speak it to a toll-free number; it remembers for you; you ask it whenever you need to remember. Simple! QueTech was co-founded by Andhra Pradesh-born Dr N. Rao Machiraju as technology incubator spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

These are just a few of over 1,000 applications already available at the App Store ( www.apple.com/iphone/appstore/ ) within a month of its opening.

Apple says over 100,000 users have downloaded over a million copies of applications, about half of them being free.

More Stories on : Software | Convergence | Telecommunications

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