Scott Corley has been working on a game of solitaire for a decade, and the Chicago gamemaker may finally have a winning hand.
Over at Model Metrics, a local business software developer, the 5-year-old firm is talking with outside investors for the first time to “get us to the next level,” said Dave Dahlberg, a company vice president. “We’re placing a big bet on this.”
Corley and Dahlberg are in the business of third-party software development, which has reshaped many Web sites and is poised to dramatically alter the wireless industry. The change is being driven by the updated software platform on Apple Inc.’s iPhone and is expected to be quickly followed by wireless carriers.
The iPhone is “big and friendly — you can touch it,” said Jim Brady, founder and president of Lake Forest-based Earthcomber, which will launch an iPhone application to go along with the GPS-enhanced programs it makes for other devices such as the BlackBerry and the Palm. “It doesn’t look like an engineer’s vision of the world. It looks like an experience.”
The wireless industry sees mobile applications as a crucial part of its future, as carriers gradually shed their old business model of controlling what features are allowed on phones. Companies such as Verizon Wireless and Sprint are embarking on so-called open initiatives, making their platforms available for third-party developers to design software for handsets.
“Everybody understands that this really does reset the playing field for the wireless community,” said Anthony Lewis, vice president of open development at Verizon Wireless.
No set business model
Given the relative youth of the mobile applications industry, no one has settled on a surefire business model. Some developers charge for their applications, while others offer their programs for free but run ads with them. Location-based applications and services — those that tap into a phone’s navigation capability — are considered especially appealing to advertisers, who can serve up ads specifically targeted to a user’s locale.
Apple provided a model of how to offer such mobile-based applications with the mid-July launch of its App Store, a marketplace of more than 900 mobile applications that can be easily downloaded to its iPhone. The company said during its quarterly earnings report two weeks ago that more than 25 million applications have been downloaded. Many of the applications are free or cost a few dollars, with Apple taking a cut from sales.
Customize your phone
These little software programs come from third-party developers and allow consumers to customize their phones.
Busy parents might opt for tools to keep track of household schedules and grocery shopping lists. Foodies could download applications that locate nearby restaurants, provide reviews and make reservations.
The applications are being created by many different developers — some big, some small — and the Chicago area is one beehive of activity.
For game players, there’s a version of solitaire that Corley has an “obsession” of getting right.
He formed Red Mercury LLC in 1999 to create games for the Palm Pilot. His first game was AcidSolitaire, and now it’s on the iPhone — but it’s hardly the same.
“This game is very specifically tailored for a touch mobile device,” Corley said.
AcidSolitaire includes a feature to automatically move cards for the user when the game play is obvious. “It doesn’t make the decision for you, but the goal of our game is to win,” Corley said. “It should be designed in a way to help you win the game.”
The game, which sells for $9.99, has garnered four- and five-star (the best) user reviews from iPhone players.
But all that experience nearly went for naught a few years ago when Corley came close to folding Red Mercury. The Palm market headed south as fewer people bought those devices, and he took a job at another Chicago game developer.
But when Apple opened its iPhone software platform this year, “I saw the iPhone as the next place I wanted to be,” Corley said. “I was the most excited about that platform than I ever have been.”
He’ll have a better sense of his future plans once Apple starts sharing detailed numbers with developers, expected in August. “But we think it’s doing well and we have very high hopes.”
He’s not alone.
Developers try to cash in
Chicago-based Model Metrics had 1,500 downloads for its expense application the day the App Store launched. The company is awaiting additional figures from Apple, but the initial response was so positive the company wants to add to its software development team.
We want “to increase our growth rate by introducing products that make sense,” Dahlberg said. “To do that right, it’s going to require some investment.”
The signature application on Expense2Go is “receipt capture.” It integrates with the iPhone’s camera so a business user snaps a picture of a receipt and automatically files it with an expense report instead of sending paper receipts separately.
Other platforms
While AT&T has its exclusive Apple partnership, and Verizon is working on its own open platform, Sprint and T-Mobile have joined forces with Google. In November, the search-technology giant created the Open Handset Alliance, bringing together carriers, mobile handset manufacturers, semiconductor companies and software developers to work on a platform dubbed Android.
Sprint has worked closely with application developers for years and is opening further as the industry evolves, said spokeswoman Jennifer Walsh Keifer. The carrier has launched a contest for Java developers that want to make an application for the new Instinct phone, Sprint’s iPhone competitor.
Drew Wade, the founder of Chicago-based developer Turbohorse, said applications still need some work. Many have yet to fully take advantage of basic mobile-phone features such as the contacts list, for instance. But in Wade’s view, applications are the key to turning ordinary handsets into powerful, handheld computers.
“The technology has a lot of functionality that the consumer may or may not be really aware of, and can be unleashed,” Wade said.
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DOWNLOADS AVAILABLE
AcidSolitaire Collection
*What it does: Collection includes three popular card games: solitaire, freecell and spider. Games are intuitive — they make obvious moves for you — to make the games more user-friendly.
*Cost: $9.99
Expense2Go
*What it does: Business software for automating expense account reporting. The iPhone application ties into the Salesforce .com suite of business software, but others can use it as well.
*Cost: Free for Sales force.com users; $10 monthly for non-users.
Earthcomber
*What it does: Combines a personalized profile with a phone’s GPS system to provide automatic updates on local businesses and points of interest.
*Cost: Free
*When it will be available: A Web-based version is available at Earthcomber.com /mobile. Earthcomber will be in Apple’s App Store this month.
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wawong@tribune.com
ebenderoff@tribune.com
