Billing & OSS World: Behind the iPhone Curtain: AirKast, the Mobile App & Provisioning Factory

According to Apple, more than 200,000 apps have now been developed for the iPhone. It's an astounding figure that conjures up images of iFanatic developers working all hours of the night in their basements. And one of them, to be sure, is Ethan Nicholas, the urban legend and developer of the iShoot game who reportedly wrote the app in his spare time and has netted about $800,000 for his efforts.

Well, being a PC user, I've downloaded many a program from CNET's Download.com, a site that distributes freeware and shareware apps. I made a quick visit to the CNET site and discovered that Download.com distributes about 20,000 applications for the Windows platform.

Hmm, I wondered. If the iPhone was only released in late 2007, how could it have 10 times more supported software than CNET? It doesn't make sense.

Well, if you're a skeptic like me and you wonder how that army of iPhone developers got so productive, then you need to know about AirKast, a mobile app provisioning company that specializes in helping newspaper, magazine, radio, and other publishers create highly interactive and multimedia-rich mobile apps.

I ran into Diane Robinette, AirKast's Marketing VP, almost by chance at CTIA.  Actually I slipped into a conference room where I didn't belong. I mean, what's a B/OSS analyst doing in a room with 150 mobile app geeks?  So as I sat there listening and getting confused by the presentations, Diane got up to speak and started using familiar words like "provisioning" which caused my ears to perk up. I decided to learn who this company was.

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