Make Your Own iPhone App

A new company called Swebapps promises to make an iPhone app for your business for $250-$450, plus a monthly $25-$35 fee. You choose, Chinese-menu style, from numerous possible “buttons,” which essentially serve as bookmarks for content stored on Swebapps’ servers. More buttons cost more money. The idea seems to be to make a mini-website in the form of an iPhone app.

I guess clients might think it is cool that I have an iPhone app even though they could get the same info by surfing to my website. But my prediction is that almost all clients would use such an app exactly once. On the other hand, do I care? Once I make an impression as “the guy with the iPhone app — so cool!” does it matter whether the client actually uses the app? Then again, this thing looks awfully plain (bordering on ugly) so maybe I would become “the guy with the lame iPhone app.”

The price is fairly modest if you have an actual revenue-generating business, but the pain in the ass of coordinating yet another web presence may be the biggest cost.