Antioch resident Jeff Lee represents Middle Tennessee’s newest generation of entrepreneurs.
After quitting a technology job in Ohio, the 35-year-old Lee moved to the Nashville area with an idea for an iPhone app, which he hopes to spin into a full-fledged company.
Lee’s project is SevenLunches, an app through which local restaurants can send daily lunch specials to customers, harnessing the iPhone’s GPS software to let nearby users know what noontime dishes local eateries are serving.
“It’s a self-serve broadcast tool for restaurants,” said Lee, who says he is in talks with Silicon Valley investors about SevenLunches. “Google ad words serves as the standard for self-serve online advertising, this could serve as the standard for physical locations to get the word out.”
According to a recent study by the trade group TechNet, nearly half a million jobs have been created in the so-called app economy since 2007, the year the iPhone came out.
Although no cities in Tennessee were named in the report as particular hotspots, local technology professionals have noticed an ever-growing community of app entrepreneurs in Middle Tennessee who set up local creative networks which, by some estimates, have already produced thousands of smartphone apps to a worldwide audience.
Two percent of all app activity on iPhones and Androids occurs in Tennessee, according to one industry measurement.
That might not seem like a striking amount, but it’s a higher share of activity than Washington, Oregon and Massachusetts, according to San Francisco-based Flurry, which tracks 90 percent of all new iPhone and Android app activity.
It ranked Tennessee the 17th highest app user in the nation, indicating that usage is about even with population size here.
Many local developers are betting that their smartphone ideas — is there an app for that? — will be cool enough to grab droves of users, or at least spark enough activity to support a comfortable business career.
Indeed, as the popularity of mobile computing and social network sites hits its stride, the path for the app economy opens wider in Middle Tennessee.
“Many developers here are starting to put together ideas that are finding funding and momentum,” said Ben Henderson, partner at local software development company Firefly Logic. “With the health care, music and other established networks already here, developers are trying to figure out how to sell their apps, because for one to succeed, you have to be a salesman.”
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BreathalEyes is an iPhone app released a year ago that lets users measure blood alcohol levels based on involuntary eye movements, calculated from an iPhone camera shot.
The app is the brainchild of Nashville resident Rob Andrews and his two partners, Russell Ries and Clay Bradley.
Andrews, whose primary income is from freelance videography, said the app has been purchased by more than 15,000 people, at 99 cents a download.
Since Apple sells the app on iTunes, the retail giant takes a 30 percent cut of each download — as it does with every app purchase. Android takes the same amount. For them, profits are pouring in from mobile apps.
The app economy, according to the TechNet study, generated around $20 billion in revenue in 2011.
Furthermore, Forrester Research estimates that revenue from customers downloading apps will hit $38 billion by 2015.
But for small start-ups like BreathalEyes making money remains a tricky proposition. Still in debt from the hefty cost of research and development, the partners haven’t managed to break even yet.
Nonetheless, Andrews and his two colleagues are counting on the money they invested in the app’s development to pay dividends in coming years.
They’re hoping the app will one day be used by law enforcement and medical professionals.
“You put in a lot of work on the front end, invest a lot of money, and then if it hits big, you just have to keep it rolling,” the 26-year-old Andrews said.
But when an app hits that sweet spot, “you don’t necessarily have to do a ton of work anymore,” he adds.
“It’s like if you’re a musician, you write a really good album, you get it out there and start making money from royalties.”
Not all people involved in the app economy are computer engineers and programmers.
Those creating ideas, marketing them and selling the product are also part and parcel of the app economy. For Andrews, the app business is a side project, and that’s a common situation in the tech world.
What’s more, neither Andrews nor his two partners are programmers. Instead, they outsource the tech work to specialty firms, or friends with a knack for technical wizardry.
“You can be guys like us and not really know how to program but still be involved with the app world,” Andrews said.
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At a recent brainstorming session at the technology firm Centresource with local entrepreneur and Belmont student Drew Hanlen, planners sat around a slide-show presentation and tried to sharpen the focus of Hanlen’s forthcoming mobile app.
Hanlen, 22, runs a basketball development program called Pure Sweat in which he trains professional players and assists coaches with workout programs.
Rather than starting a business from an app, Hanlen, like half of Centresource’s app clients, wants to pull the weight of mobile technology to branch out his core enterprise — in Hanlen’s case, to reach adolescent and teenage basketball players.
“I don’t have time to train everyone individually,” he said. “I basically want them to pay me for not doing anything,” Hanlen said of his training app, which will cost around $30 a month by this summer. “Kids will get professional workouts for nothing close to what it cost the pros.”
Local developers said more established companies, not just boutique firms, are spending big bucks to elbow their way into the app market.
“More corporate companies want to be app players. It’s another channel for your message,” Firefly Logic’s Henderson said. “Many times, it’s a companion to an existing service.”
In some cases, like at local technology accessory manufacturer Griffin, apps are replacing older merchandise.
The tech accessories company recently swapped its iTalk, a device that turns iPods into voice recorders, for an app that lets users send iPhone recordings to iTunes or the online storage site Dropbox.
“The app publishing model is very strong,” said Mark Rowan, Griffin’s president. “People are just starting to figure out how innovative and how useful iPads and iPhones can be.”
But with 529,000 active apps available on the iTunes store, getting noticed requires clever promotion or a major dose of good luck.
Apple’s app promotion powers, like its “app of the day” feature, can spawn half a million downloads or more overnight, some observers say.
“People look at what Apple does,” said Nashville-based Brad McCarty, managing director of the technology blog Next Web. “Apple features apps all the time that are not as deserving as some others in the same category. The eternal problem becomes: How do you get discovered?”
“They are more egalitarian than most think,” said Peter Farago, spokesman at San Francisco-based Flurry. “It’s in Apple’s best interest to let innovation flourish.”
Farago said consumers are paralyzed by choice overload on the iTunes app store. “People are looking for a way to cut through the noise,” he said. Thus, Apple serve as a curator of sorts.
One way to get noticed is to fill a regional niche, as Nashville developer Chris Camp is trying to do with his Yaptap, an app that helps church youth groups and other organizations send out bite-sized messages and reminders to members.
“It’s more time-sensitive than a newsletter and it happens with two button clicks,” Camp said. “We can let schools send timely messages to students in seconds.”
How user-friendly an app is, and how easily it is shared on social media, are two cornerstones of a successful one, according to app economy analysts.
McCarty of Next Web said a promising app idea is one that “scratches an itch,” or one that “after using it, you say, ‘Wow, now that will make my life easier.”
Henderson of Firefly Logic thinks he helped develop a fitting download for Music City denizens: the Sing Harmonies app with which vocalists can practice the highs and lows of four-part harmonies.
“You’ve got to have a novel idea, or consumers won’t find you,” he said.
Even when consumers do discover new apps, however, some are still uncomfortable paying for them,” McCarty said.
“It’s becoming a little easier to swallow these days,” he said, “but it’s still an intangible thing, and people have a hard time paying for something they can’t touch.”
(source – http://www.tennessean.com/article/20120219/BUSINESS04/302190056/-App-economy-heats-up-consumers-go-mobile)
An alternate application exists for just about every Google application offered, or installed by default, on Android phones. Some are great, some are workable, and some will make you realize the value of Google’s free-for-everyone approach. Here’s my short list of potential swap-outs:
