MotherApp Lets You Create Mobile Apps Quickly & Easily For All Major Mobile Devices

MotherApp -a play of the phrase ‘Mother of Applications‘ – lets you create native mobile apps on iPhone, Android and Blackberry using HTML quickly and easily. While developers were previously spending lots and lots of time (and money) learning, coding in and debugging the individual mobile SDKs, with the MotherApp Engine, all they have to do is make a version of the existing HTML / PHP / Ruby-on-Rails / ASP.Net whatever-technology-is-used site return motherApp HTML code and then let the MotherApp Engine do the rest! MotherApp’s clients include mobile operators, banks, and leading content providers.

At the July 21st SFNewTech event, we interviewed Kedar Shah of MotherApp.After he told us about the people who created MotherApp and his role in the company, Kedar gave us a detailed run down of what exactly the MotherApp engine was, the problem it is trying to solve, the benefits for individual web developers who want in on the mobile platforms as well as companies and corporations that are looking to quickly and easily deploy their product or service over a wide variety of mobile devices. We also learned how MotherApp’s Business Model i.e. how they make money for the Company.

What is MotherApp?

Kedar: MotherApp is a company which does cross platform development for iPhone, Android and Blackberry. They have an engine for developing these apps from a single source code. This engine has been released to the public as a free service that all developers can use.

Is the MotherApp engine something you install on a machine or is all web based?

Kedar: It’s completely cloud-based. The developer writes an application on their server that is in the syntax of MotherApp HTML. They can integrate with any type of content system on their server — a database, content management system, a web application and port it to a native app through the MotherApp HTML language.

How do app developers test their code against various mobile devices?

Kedar: App developers can use the MA debugger, which is a web based tool for running the app on your browser and testing it and verifying the functionality. Once it checks out there, you can create a binary through the MotherApp engine and then load it on your phone and test it on the phone. The debugger is a good proxy for figuring out how the app works and getting it to a good state before you start running it on the phone itself.

How much does the MotherApp service cost?

Kedar: The MotherApp service is free for developers to use and learn. To sell an application using MotherApp, the company charges a license fee for the engine. Typically that ranges around $500 of upfront fee and it also does custom mobile development consulting services, where they would charge for development projects and they do revenue shares with partners for developing an application and then jointly selling it and marketing it together.

If I’m a company that doesn’t want to deal with any of the programming, debugging, I can just outsource the whole project design?

Kedar: Absolutely, especially if you’re a company that has different users on iPhone and different ones on Android and Blackberry and you want to create applications that will run on all of those and manage them and continually update them — then MotherApp is an excellent partner for any enterprise, large or small. See our Client Services section on our website for a full list of services.

MotherApp has worked with some of the largest telecom companies in Hong Kong — finance companies as well, media content, radio stations, event companies. They’re working on different applications and different industries. It’s a very broad application of this technology.

What about source control? Do you have any facility for developers to maintain versions or is that out of the scope and they have to manage it on their own?

Kedar: Currently they manage it on their own, but there could be a strategy to develop an open source community for developers to share code that’s based on this platform. That would increase the adoption and the popularity of the platform and create a community around it.

You mentioned something today about converting blog engines or magazines. Can you tell us a little bit more about it?

Kedar: MotherApp also has a blog engine for creating native applications for Android and Blackberry. Anyone can use this service. It costs $99 per mobile platform — per Android or Blackberry. If you have an RSS feed, a WordPress blog or Twitter feed, Facebook, YouTube, you can choose up to four of these realtime feeds and then publish them in a native app all from a web based UI. You don’t need to know any programming. You can just go in and create an application.

If I have a blog and I create the app, then when I use the app the blog content will be sort of formatted for the mobile device?

Kedar: Exactly. It will formatted. It will be a native application that the user can run on their Android and Blackberry. It would have realtime updates of your blog or your Twitter feed.

Do you have developer support forums for MotherApp?

Kedar: We have a developer support forum which answers queries from developers. You can find it at http://forums.motherapp.com/

Is someone from your company actively monitoring and responding or is it completely community driven?

Kedar: It’s actually monitored by our Co-founder and President and the engineering team monitors it actively and answers questions from developers.

Thank you very much and good luck.