App Programmers’ Daunting Task: Finding New App Ideas
Sunday, August 1st, 2010There are 225,000 applications in the iPhone store, 60,000 in Google’s Android store. But what hasn’t been created yet?
The original 2007 iPhone had only one screenful of software icons, believe it or not. You could not install new ones of your own. It took a whole year for Apple to open the App Store, making it possible for the masses to download and install new applications — or programs — in the process, creating a whole new gadget category.
The store changed everything. Why just make calls, when you could auto-tune your singing voice, play virtual Ping-Pong or summon bodily sounds on command?
There are 225,000 applications in the iPhone store and 60,000 in Google’s Android store. But those statistics will be out of date by the end of this week, or even the end of this sentence.
You may find it hard to comprehend a selection that vast, let alone navigate it in search of the good stuff. But it could be worse: You could be the aspiring application programmer who has to come up with a fresh idea. (Google has the idea that anyone can be an application developer with its new Google App Inventor software.)
There is an application that reproduces mooing sounds (Hello Cow), one that dials someone from your address book at random (iDrunkTxt), a game in which you score points by licking the screen (iLickiet). What could possibly be left?
In the past, I challenged my Twitter followers (I’m @pogue) to invent iPhone or Android applications that do not exist but should.
I will spare you the wishful-thinking responses: “an app that puts my kids to bed at night,” “an app that gives my wife the ‘right answer.”‘
In general, I will also omit the great ideas that do, in fact, have existing applications. (One popular idea: a To Do-list program…
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