Over the last year, the India App Accelerator at Bengaluru has guided thousands of young local developers to create the best-in-class apps. Now Apple is planning to start ‘Business and Marketing’ sessions that will help developers sell and market their apps effectively. Starting early this summer, it will help Indian developers understand the marketing aspect of the app business.
Apple is assisting developers to better understand and access cutting-edge technology tools such as Apple Pencil, ARKit, and the custom-made programming language, Swift. The tech giant facilitates this by bringing in experts and evangelists. They recently helped an Ahmedabad-based company, Designmate, to use the Apple pencil, and ARKit, and develop the Froggipedia app, which was first demonstrated at Apple’s Chicago education event last month. The app lets students learn the anatomy of frogs on the iPad without having to physically dissect a real frog.
A Chennai-based self-taught coder, Raja Vijayaraman, whose VFX work was part of a Rajinikanth’s movie, Robot, has built a smart calculator called Calzy using Apple’s software, Swift. He now develops applications as a full-time profession. Another developer using the App Accelerator is all of 10 years old. He developed a conversion app that helps convert scientific units from metric to imperial. He claims that learning the Swift programming language cleaned up his coding skills and took care of the user interface. Currently, the boy is working on a new app called Circuitdesk, again with the help of App Accelerator.
India is an exciting global market for Apple with incredible growth potential. The country has a huge developer base, with incredible software talent, and a growing interest in iOS development. Apple has approximately half a million registered developers in India, three-quarters of which are involved in the app economy with other related jobs. Apple believes that developers here can make software that everyone around the world is interested in.
The effect of the App Accelerator on the developer community in India has already been very substantial. This unique initiative by Apple is free and open for all developers. The developers are quite impressed with the way Apple’s in-house experts have helped them improve the user interface, debug errors, localize apps, and offer design feedback.
To ensure global standards for the apps, the accelerator has focused on two key technologies- Swift and the ARKit. The experts brief the developers and provide one-on-one app reviews, and guide the developers on design practices and help them refine their skills.