Call it the iPhone economy.
Apple's soon-to-open online App Store has triggered a scramble among software developers to write business plans aimed at making money off Apple's iPhone, a mini-computer that doubles as a phone.
"I'm seeing an excitement among mobile developers that I've never seen before," said Sam Altman, chief executive and co-founder of Mountain View-based Loopt, a location-based social networking service. "People who said they'd never start a mobile (applications) company because they didn't want to rely on the carriers are now starting companies focused only on the iPhone."
Apple recently provided the tools engineers need to create applications for its popular mobile device. The Cupertino company said some 250,000 iPhone software development kits have been downloaded. The App Store Web site, where applications will be sold or given away, is expected to launch soon, perhaps July 11 when the faster next-generation iPhone goes on sale.
Apple could be creating a billion-dollar industry built around the iPhone, said Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. In a recent note to investors, Munster wrote that the App Store could create a $1 billion-plus iPhone ecosystem by the end of 2009.
Last week, 5,200 software developers packed San Francisco's Moscone Center for Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference. For the first time, mobile software writers were invited. Apple offered a taste of the types of services iPhone owners could experience very soon, including near real-time updates and video from Major League Baseball, sophisticated location-based social networking that allows people to find friends, and video games in which users play by tilting the iPhone. Munster said the applications were "more powerful and attractive" than anything he'd seen on a mobile device before. What excites many developers are the iPhone's capabilities and its "stable" software platform, which makes writing programs for it relatively easy and quick. The iPhone "puts the Internet in your pocket, whether it's e-mail, whether it's Web browsing, whether's it's YouTube," Apple vice president Greg Joswiak said. "The entire Internet is in your pocket." The iPhone's capabilities are sure to become even greater after Apple rolls out its newest version, dubbed 3G for "third generation," which company CEO Steve Jobs says will operate twice as fast as the inaugural device, released just a year ago.