Business apps explode on smartphones

As an example, Weiss pointed to the Nationwide iPhone app, currently being touted in the insurance company’s commercials. The company’s Accident Toolkit app helps consumers easily walk through the protocol after a car accident, including collecting insurance information, processing the claim or even turning the phone into a flashlight. While it isn’t an app from iPhoneAppQuotes’ network, Weiss said it is an example of how a consumer-facing app can change how a huge company operates to account for mobile phones.

Instead of targeting consumers, other companies are using mobile apps to improve internal efficiencies, Weiss said. For example, one iPhoneAppQuotes client, a delivery service provider, created a mobile app to alleviate paperwork and better track the stops their drivers make. Another created an app based on a formula to help artists price their artwork.

Weiss is under NDA for most of the apps in development, but some of iPhoneAppQuotes’ announced customers include BetterQOL, makers of migration tracker iHeadache, Fardini Media’s iGum app and Jorma’s Break Down Way for mobile guitar lessons. Medical apps, ranging from reference apps to plug-in device apps, and book apps in which publishers distribute their content on mobile devices, are also taking off, he said.

Weiss plans to launch sites dedicated to other mobile operating systems in the future, but thought starting with Apple was the most logical place. Apple’s App Store holds more than 65,000 apps that have been downloaded more than 1.5 billion times in just one year. Weiss wouldn’t release how many developers are in iPhoneAppQuote’s own network, but said there has been a 30% increase in registered developers in the last three months.