By John Y. Chen

Most firms still think in terms of low resolution and, in general, low-capability devices when designing applications for the mobile platform, and for good reason: Most mobile phones fall into that category.

The iPhone is a game-changer in that this is a fully functional computer with graphics capabilities that dwarf even some full-sized PCs on sale today. Your basic $500 Dell computer using Intel's graphics chipset renders complex graphics slower than an iPhone.

Savvy developers have latched on to this fact and took full advantage of the capability to give iPhone users experiences that are far beyond what was imaginable even one year ago. The level of innovation is still accelerating.

With an installed base of more than 17 million iPhone installed base and an additional 13 million iPod touch devices that are capable of running iPhone's software, developing for the mobile platform has never been so profitable since the beginning of mobile phones.

With the Apple iTunes App Store distribution model, any application can be seen by millions of potential users who can download and pay for it instantly.

Developers have responded by writing more than 25,000 applications in the nine months since the App Store opened. And to put it in perspective, six months after the App Store launched, there were 10,000 apps. So in the last three months where data is available, the number of applications has increased 150 percent.

At the heart of iPhone is the operating system which is basically OS X Leopard, a system that powers every new Apple computer today. And this is a primary reason why iPhone's success will not be easily duplicated.

Writing operating system is a non-trivial task. Just ask Microsoft how long it took Vista to finish and or ask Palm how it is doing in its latest version of Palm OS. Both operating systems were setback by delay after delay and, when they finally shipped, got less than stellar reception.

This piece of software and its software developers kit (SDK) allow developers to do fantastic things that turn any mundane task into interesting ones.

The other reason that iPhone is successful is its users.

Contrary to competitors who claim that Apple levies a "tax" because its users pay a premium relative to users who buy PC counterparts, iPhone users understand and expect products that go above and beyond their call of duty in terms of design and functionality.

Case in point is an application called "Where to?" which provides a categorized directory for searching.

At first the designers of the application had used a list to show the categories. But they wanted to jazz up the interface and make it more enticing, so they came up with a three-dimensional rotary image. As a result the phone was very well received and became one of the most popular applications.

So how do you make a successful iPhone application that will make your company look good and generate interest among your subscribers?

While you don't need to throw out all your WAP templates, you do need to think in terms of what is the best user experience irrespective of the limitation you have set for yourself prior the arrival of iPhone.

Hire a good graphics/interface designer and let him or her dream up ideas with the consumers' needs in mind.

The iPhone's SDK provides a rich set of canned user interfaces that can quickly give any application a polished look.

But to really catch the user's attention you will need to go beyond that. It could be as easy as adding a page-turning animation for a book reader such as the "Classics" application has done.

In additional to aesthetics, the iPhone also provides a host of other features that give the user a richer experience.

For instance, the iPhone's built-in accelerometer allows users to use physical action such as shaking it to get a random result. An example of this would be an application that lets you choose a new place to visit or eat whenever you shake your iPhone.

Built-in GPS is yet another feature that can be integrated into your application to provide location relevance in everything you do.

In the above example, you could filter down the list of places to go by proximity. An example would be the "Twiddler" that uses the shaking action together with GPS to find the best activity for your mood.

In the iPhone OS 3.0, scheduled to be released in June 2009, even more features are added to allow more timely interaction between application developer and its users.

A new notification framework allows users to be notified instantly when something relevant has occurred. And unlike SMS that only delivers text, rich content in the form of images, sounds or even movies can be delivered without the user incurring additional cost.

The arrival of the iPhone has upped the ante on mobile software development. Developers are no longer bounded by limitations of the mobile devices. Rather, the challenge is the ability of developers to throw away their preconceptions and deliver to their users what they meant to deliver in the first place.

This opinion piece was adapted with permission from a blogpost on iLoop Mobile's site.

John Y. Chen is a software engineer at iLoop Mobile Inc., San Jose, CA. Reach him at .