Israel is a great country to find top noth developers on all sorts of platform.
But one thing i am really surprised about is that although the iPhone is a great business ecosystem with more than 65k apps and 1 billion dollars in revenue, Israel is nearly absent of the map. Even Twitter that is still not really taking off in Israel starts to become an active player for the platform with a dozens of apps/mashups.
Actually the only company that i know of that is really doing a great job on the iPhone is TuneWiki (not only the iPhone btw). Fring has also a nice app, although my preference goes for Nimbuzz. But other than that, nothing.
Why?
- Is this because the iPhone is still not officially sold in Israel? Does an ecosystem depend on the physical distribution of a device? i don t think so. Those who already wanted an iPhone have one.
- Is this because Apple does not provide enough support to developpers in Israel? could be? But all the appstore process is centralized in Cupertino and treats equally non US and US app providers
- Is this because we re not so good at mobile apps? i don t think so. I believe israel has some of the finest minds in mobile applications (Comverse has created and provided for example the visual voicemail of the iPhone from day 1)
- Is this because historically Israel is not an Apple-friendly country? Apple has no real store here (only a reseller) and prices are off the roof. But on the other side, the iPhone SDK does not force you to be an Apple addict since you can run it on a PC.
- Is this because nearly every VC/angel i meet does not believe that the iPhone is an ecosystem big enough to justify an investment? Maybe, but who cares? There are a few shops that make 500k USD a months with zero investments out of a few apps
When i started to think of Appsfire i could not find any one relevant here to help me build it. Yann (who lives in France) is the first guy i could think of for this.
So what is the reason? Where are those developpers? Any insight?
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