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iPhone Dev Spends $500k on Development, Still Not Approved by Apple

Apple’s App Store is an interesting, exciting and frightening place all at the same time. iPhone application developer Chris Nikkel knows this first hand. His application “Newber” has spent nearly 75 days waiting for approval from Apple, and he has yet to hear a word.

Chris Nikkel and FreedomVoice Systems have spent nearly half a million dollars on marketing and developing Newber. The application is aimed at allowing users to seamlessly redirect incoming calls to any surrounding phones. Sound complicated? Yes. Useful? Could be. As their website states, “Simply key in a landline phone number at your location, then toggle between taking your business calls on that phone or your iPhone. Newber will automatically detect this phone each time you return to that location, allowing you to change phones with one touch. You can even swap phones in the middle of a live call without interrupting the conversation.” In a nutshell, if you’re walking into your home or office on an important call, and your iPhone’s battery is running low or your reception is poor, with Newber, simply transfer the call to your landline and pick up where you left off.

Chris Nikkel has not been able to establish a constructive line of communication with Apple. Since investing nearly five-hundred thousand dollars in the development and marketing of Newber, they still have not been accepted into the App Store. We reached out to Chris Nikkel and FVS Corporate with some questions about their approach and experience with the app store. Here is the Q&A exchange verbatim (Our questions are in bold).

Who’s concept/idea is Newber?

Chris Nikkel, Director of R & D for FreedomVoice Systems, came up with the concept of Newber after listening to the speech by Steve Jobs where he announced the App Store. He was inspired by Apple’s innovation and decided to try to apply it to the types of problems that FreedomVoice Systems is known for solving.

What makes you think that Apple, and not AT&T is stopping this from begin accepted? They could potentially be missing out on revenue by customers choosing lower priced packages with the intention of using Newber.

There are already other apps in the App Store that allow you to try to avoid AT&T’s network by utilizing VoIP. These apps directly emphasize their benefits over AT&T like cheaper rates for foreign calling. If they got through the App Store process, then I can’t imagine why Newber would be any different to AT&T.

What technical reason do you think is holding up Newber from being accepted? And if you were told to change some things, would you?

It’s hard to speculate on the reasons why Apple might be holding this up, since their past history has been so inconsistent. We really want to work with Apple and AT&T to enable their customers to be more productive. If they would communicate the issue they are having, we would be more than willing to do everything we could to help resolve it. The fact we haven’t got any information on how we can help move our product through the approval process is really discouraging.

If this does not ever get accepted into the App Store, will you be rolling it out on other platforms like Android?

Yes. Whether or not the application is received by the App Store, we intend to take the application to other platforms. There’s simply too much positive feedback about the application for us not to find some way to get it to the public. Work has already begun on Blackberry, and other platforms are sure to follow.

Right now is Apple’s opportunity to be the first to market with Newber and empower their smartphone to be an innovative business device.

Is FreedomVoice Systems the company funding the development?

Newber is a product fully funded and developed by FreedomVoice Systems. We have been in business for over 10 years providing telephony solutions to small businesses.

Over $500k is an astronomical amount of money, was there ever a moment when you thought maybe you were investing too much into an uncertain future? Did you ever have any doubts about the application process before, or during initial development?

The type of product we are trying create requires not only writing a piece of software for the iPhone, but also setting up custom in-house servers to handle the call traffic. It’s not the sort of thing you could do as a weekend project, and certainly not without the funding we’ve invested.

We definitely discussed several contingencies for getting rejected from the App Store, but not being stalled indefinitely. We had heard some horror stories about applications being denied for anomalous reasons, but we were encouraged by the overwhelmingly positive feedback we’ve received from our Beta testers.

All along we’ve felt that Newber was aligned with Apple’s direction of making the iPhone a more business-ready smartphone. The apps that we’ve seen enter the App Store in the Business category all seemed to be more like gadgets, calculators, and voice recorders. We feel that a truly helpful business application like Newber should not meet strong resistance from Apple.

What marketing have you done thus far?

• Booth at CTIA ShowStoppers on September 9th, 2008.
• Booth at CES Unveiled on November 11th, 2008.
• Plan to have a booth at MacWorld ShowStoppers on January 4th, 2009.
• Plan to have a booth at CES on January 8-11, 2009.
• Launch of a product site, www.mynewber.com.
• Supporting a limited beta that includes a combination of bloggers, media, and targeted users.
• Outreach to build relationships with top media sources: (Gizmodo, TMCnet)

As far as the technology is concerned, how are the calls transferred seamlessly?

All of your business calls go through the new phone number we give you, your Newber. When you decide to move a call to another phone, we initiate a call to the new phone. As soon as you answer, the call has transferred. The process is transparent to the person with whom you are speaking and requires no interruption in your conversation.

In a nutshell, what would you like to see Apple change in the App Store, or the approval process as it currently is?

If they want to make the process work, they need to be more consistent in enforcing the rules that they have established to help companies like ours plan a strategy to bring innovative products to market. In addition, they need to communicate with the developers to help them get their applications into the store. Rather than “rejecting” an application, it would be better if Apple just told the developer what to change to get it into the store.

In summing up, if there’s anything you’d like to let fellow developers know about your experience/process in order to help them in the future, please feel free (obviously respecting your confidentiality).

I don’t think the time has come where developers should completely give up on the device. Recently, Apple has opened up the door a bit more and let in some of the apps that were previously rejected. I think that developers should continue to encourage Apple to make improvements to the App Store and its approval process. It’s the software that forms a customer’s experience and determines whether a platform will succeed. It would be wise for Apple to follow the lead of its developers and open up better lines of communication.

Newber has spent nearly two and a half months in App Store limbo. With no word from Apple, Chris Nikkel doesn’t know if they will ever be approved. Developers have recently begun speaking up about their concerns with Apple’s app store. As we delve deeper into Apple’s thought process with the App Store, communication will play a big part in the entire platform’s success.