Business Opportunities Weblog

Iphone Music Maker

By on February 19, 2009 in Ideas


Fortune Small Business:

A year ago, Ge Wang didn’t own an iPhone and had no plans to start a company. Today Wang, an associate music professor at Stanford, is co-founder of Smule, a startup that sells musical applications for the iPhone.

Smule’s hottest program, Ocarina, is billed as the first musical instrument for the iPhone. For 99 cents, users can make flutelike music by blowing into the microphone and fingering on-screen “holes.” This past November, Ocarina was the best-selling iPhone app in the U.S. and 10 other countries. Wang says the product made “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in its first month, even after the 30% cut that Apple takes on all iPhone software sold through its store.

Wang founded Smule last June with Jeff Smith, a veteran of two successful Silicon Valley startups. Smule’s seven full-time employees and seven part-timers have developed four iPhone applications so far.

“You don’t need to be a big development company,” Wang says. “It doesn’t take a lot of time to try ideas on this thing.” Ocarina was built in just two weeks.

Selling via the iPhone store “can make you some serious money in a short space of time,” agrees Iain Gillot, president of iGR Inc., a wireless-technology research company. “But there’s a danger of becoming a one-hit wonder and not being able to sustain a company.”

Photo by Smule.

iphone software

Rich Whittle has added 6,226 posts to Business Opportunities Weblog.

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  • Jaclyn

    This was an interesting read. it makes you wonder how many more thing’s including musical thing’s they will come up with for the phone! i also agree with the last statement of taking the risk of becoming a one hit wonder and not being able to sustain a company, especially with something like musical applications for a phone. this just seem’s like something that would be most used by teen’s or smaller children, it just doesn’t seem like something adults would use enough to purchase and download to their phone. so…it makes me wonder how long it will last before it becomes old and no one think’s of it anymore.

  • cassy

    Its an interesting idea that this kind of iphone was owesome! Even if you used your hands and mouth to make it sounds by touching and blowing it. Really makes you fun and you’ll enjoy it also. If you have some problems and needed friends to lean on you can used this as your personal gadget to make you feel better. Hassle free I mean! But the problem is, if the people getting bored to this iphone are they still using it or leave it in one corner… Its because other people are not contented in one thing.