‘Half a Billion vs 50m’: Ideaworks Labs Blows Open the Wider Smartphone Market for Mobile Application Developers

LONDON, October 27 /PRNewswire/ –

– Airplay SDK 4.0: Rich Apps, Richer Developers. Full Free Evaluation
Available Online

Currently it is prohibitively expensive for independent developers to
create and port mobile applications across a wide range of handsets.
Developers therefore target only a few devices, seriously limiting their
opportunity for revenue. Today, most make a choice of Apple’s iPhone as it
has a high market share, a solid SDK and an attractive business model,
provided the developer can ensure that their product does not get lost in the
daunting catalogue size. However the market for mobile applications is much
bigger than just iPhone, if only developers could find a cost-effective way
of creating applications for the wide array of operating systems (OS’s) and
devices.

To solve this problem, Ideaworks Labs is now licensing its cross-platform
Airplay SDK, enabling indie developers to deploy applications across hundreds
of smartphones and featurephones at an affordable licensing cost. Airplay SDK
4.0 allows them to compile their application once to native CPU instructions,
then deploy with a single click to all iPhone, Android, Symbian, Windows
Mobile and BREW devices. Airplay takes care of the vagaries of the various
underlying OS’s so that developers need not be steeped in detail; it also
deals with handset differences such as screen size and input type, again
simplifying the task for the developer.

Indie developers can now multiply their addressable market by over 10
times, from 50m Apple devices to the installed base of over half a billion
smartphones and featurephones globally, as Airplay SDK slashes the costs of
porting and testing almost to zero. By reducing such costs, more budget can
be poured into development of better user experiences and sharper marketing,
again increasing the developer’s revenue opportunity.

“Airplay SDK has been a bit of an industry secret for some time”,
explains Alex Caccia, CEO Ideaworks Labs, “as we’ve licensed it to some of
the largest mobile games publishers worldwide. With the addition of native
support for Android, a sophisticated UI framework, GPS, HTTP and more,
Airplay SDK 4.0 is now an extremely powerful development solution for all
types of rich mobile applications. We’re hugely excited to be able to offer
Airplay SDK 4.0 at an affordable price to all developers, and look forward to
seeing great applications from the iPhone and other app stores making more
money for their creators by migrating to Android, Symbian, BREW and other
platforms.”

“Airplay SDK helps solve the fragmentation problem for developers by
focusing on the core commonality between all devices – ARM(R) CPUs”, said Ian
Drew, EVP of Marketing at ARM. “We invested in Ideaworks Labs earlier this
year to help them prepare for launching Airplay SDK 4.0, and are greatly
excited by the prospect of opening up huge numbers of ARM technology-based
devices to apps developers for the first time”.

Jose Carlos Lopez, Technical Director at Virtway Software, said “Several
months ago we made the decision to adopt Airplay SDK for the development of a
next-generation social networking application for ICYOU, initially targeted
at iPhone. We were amazed to see that, with a single click and without even
recompiling the application, we were able to generate an Android build that
runs beautifully on multiple devices. For zero additional cost, we can now
target all Android devices, and that will certainly open up a huge additional
market for our application

“We chose the Airplay SDK for our first iPhone title ‘Backbreaker’ due to
its support for standard C++ libraries, which enabled us to easily port our
animation engine ‘morpheme’ to the platform”, added Torsten Reil, CEO at
NaturalMotion. “This also allowed us to use assets straight from the PS3/360
version for the game, which played a major factor in the commercial success
(#1 app) of the title.”

Developers with annual revenues of less than $50,000 can use Airplay SDK
4.0 for iPhone development absolutely free, or deploy to all platforms at a
cost of $99 per seat per year. Those with revenues between $50,000 and $1m
pay $999 per seat per year, and receive an increased level of support. For
organisations earning over $1m annually, a per-application fee is payable,
available on request.

All developers can register and download a full free evaluation of
Airplay SDK 4.0 by visiting http://www.airplaysdk.com .

About Ideaworks Labs

Ideaworks Labs is a privately held technology company headquartered in
London. Founded in 1998 with a strong Oxford and Cambridge computer science
and electronic engineering pedigree, the company has an unparalleled track
record of creative innovation and technical leadership in the field of
cross-platform mobile applications. The Airplay platform is the result of
over 8 years of research and development into high-performance native
multimedia applications on mobile devices, and has powered ground-breaking
and award-winning titles such as Konami’s “Metal Gear Solid Mobile”, which
won “Best Game” and “Operators’ Choice” accolades at IMGA 2008.

    More information can be found at: http://www.ideaworkslabs.com

    Contacts:

    Ideaworks Labs
    +44(0)8456-434969
    press@ideaworkslabs.com

    Jo Jamieson, Emma Sinclair & Luke Davies
    Berkeley PR
    +44(0)118-988-2992
    ideaworks@berkeleypr.co.uk

SOURCE Ideaworks Labs