A Killer Business Idea, but for Apple Corp Only

Posted: Friday 13 Mar 2009, under category Ideas

An SMS-to-text killer-application for the iPhone that I will not be able to do by myself.

I read that the Apple's iTunes Store generated a revenue of more than 1,7 B dollars in 2008. That's huge, guys! Apple takes 30% of this money, but the rest is for the creative minds who develop new applications. So, I thought, this could be a perfect opportunity to monetize my last idea. But I was wrong. Here is why.

The idea I am talking about is good (I think) and pretty straightforward. It is about SMS messages.

SMS are quickly becoming a major communication system all around the world. They started in Europe, where they are now more used than phone calls because they are more discrete and cheaper. Their popularity is growing fast in North America and on other continents too. But think about what happens when you are driving your car (or motorbike, or bicycle): you receive an SMS, you read it easily, but what next? If you want to answer you can choose between
1. stop and write the answer
2. continue driving and write your answer anyway (hard and very dangerous - also illegal in some places!)
3. give up with SMS and call back the sender

But, hey: what if you could simply hold down a button and dictate a short answer to your phone? Something like "Hi honey, I will be home in 20 minutes".

This is the idea. Technically speaking, it is not a big deal. Voice recognition engines are standard and easily available on the market. And I bet an application like that would be a hit among mobile phone users. I made a quick poll among some friends and most of them told me this would be extremely useful.

There are at the moment some different platforms to address such an application. Microsoft's Windows Mobile, Google's Android and Nokia, to mention just some of them. But the one in which my idea would fit the best is Apple's iPhone. It is an open platform, widely used all around the world, and with the advantage of a broad community of developers who would be happy (some of them, at least) to join the endeavor by sharing the effort, and of course the earnings.

But here comes the flaw. Apple doesn't allow third parties to develop applications which involve a deep integration with the iPhone operating system. They are only allowed to develop and sell programs that run on their own on the iPhone. A voice-to-SMS application like the one I am talking about would only work if a button could appear in the SMS management tool, allowing the user to dictate his SMS and let the iPhone translate it for him in text and send it. And this interaction, according to what I've heard, can not be done without the involvement of Apple Corp itself.

This is why my only chance here is to send this idea straight to Steve Jobs (he will not read it, I know...), proposing to take in consideration the making of such an application. «By the way, Steve: here on toolazytodoit.com you can find a strong group of viable partners ready to help!».

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