AppGyver is a young startup out of Helsinki which has created a cross-platform mobile development platform that allows anyone with HTML5 knowledge to create native iPhone apps quickly and efficiently. This gives power to web developers and advertising agencies to easily offer their clients feature-rich applications that are impossible to create with mobile websites and standard HTML5 apps.
The normal steps for writing and testing out an app can be a slow process. First, you have to write and design you app the development environment, compile the app as a binary file, then sync it with a cable to test out your progress on the phone. AppGyver simplifies the process with it’s live preview feature:
After only syncing the phone once with AppGyver, you can unplug your phone from your computer, write some HTML5 code, and then physically shake your phone to see a live, testable update of your progress. “This process makes it very quick and easy to make apps,” says Henri Vähäkainu, who demonstrated their platform to me.
Creating a native app through AppGyver offers several benefits compared to a a standard HTML5 app– aside from being able to use the app offline, AppGyver currently supports native transitions, access to songs, video, geolocation, navigation, data storage, push notifications, and other native features. And before they go live early next year, they expect to also support the camera and other features.
“We have made it easy to access the hardware and other native features with javascript that everyone with any background in web development should be able to learn it at no time.” says Marko Lehtimäki, CEO at AppGyver. “People love mobile apps over websites because of the better user experience. If you are building any web service, you should seriously start thinking about building an app too. Before AppGyver, it required special skills and was beyond reach for most developers. Now we are opening this opportunity for all web developers to enter the mobile app business. It is a huge market.”
“There aren’t too many native apps in Finnish today because it has been very expensive to hire a developer to make an app from scratch,” says Antti Hannula, COO at Appgyver. “Now it might make sense for businesses to create one with their web developer.”
The company has accomplished a lot from only a small seed funding round, and they hint at a much larger picture. Their website mentions plans for an “AppFactory” for even less technical would-be app developers. They say this would allow business owners to create apps without writing a line of code, using “App Factory Products,” sets of features sold by independent developers for anyone to put in their apps.
When they release their public beta early next year, they plan to have a solid working and testing environment to create cross-platform apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, and the web. “When designing these tools for developers, we wanted the ease of use like with Apple- It just works.” says Vähäkainu. “We believe we are creating the best way to develop apps.”
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