Peter Deliso has never written a computer program in his life.
But after a brainstorming session last year with his son and two daughters, ages 11, 9 and 5, respectively, he came up with the idea for an iPhone application that would turn the phone into a virtual blender. Users could pick a fruit like strawberries, watch the phone's screen appear to fill up with milk, and witness the ingredients get pureed into a smoothie.
Armed with the idea for iFruity, Deliso contacted A-1 Technology Inc., an app design firm based in New York. The company, which relies mainly on programmers it employs overseas, agreed to build Deliso's app for about $5,000.
A couple of months later, the app was ready. And with hardly any marketing efforts on his part, he said, iFruity has sold more than 5,500 copies. A year after its release, the 99-cent app still sells about 200 copies a month on Apple Inc.'s iTunes store. Apple takes a 30% cut of the revenue, leaving Deliso and his children with a nice little bit of pocket money.
"At this point, it pays for my family's constant downloads from the iTunes store," the Oak Hill, Va., lawyer said.
The firm Deliso used is one of scores of new companies that are catering to the demands of armchair software designers looking to invent the next killer app. Many of these would-be entrepreneurs have heard yarns about programmers locking themselves in a room for a weekend with a bright idea and emerging with a clever iPhone app that made them millions.
"It's kind of like the gold rush," said Jennifer Noonan, co-founder of Appsnminded, a three-mom app development company based in Calabasas. Appsnminded has developed 30 of its own apps, including the My Make Up dress-up app for young girls, which Noonan said had earned $100,000.
Having discovered a successful formula for building apps — including outsourcing the actual programming to workers in China, Ukraine and New Zealand — Noonan, Cara Hall and Jesse Douglas are looking to help other aspiring micro-entrepreneurs spin their app ideas into reality. "We get probably 10 people a day e-mailing or calling saying, 'I have an idea for an app. Can you help me?' " Noonan said.
