Birmingham student earns more than £80k from iPhone app

Jul 23 2010 by Graeme Brown, Birmingham Post

A student who devised an iPhone app from the bedroom of his shared house in Selly Oak has notched up more than £80,000 of sales worldwide in a matter of weeks.

Nineteen-year-old Greg Hughes came up with Wi-Fi Sync, a piece of downloadable software which synchronises a user’s iPhone and computer wirelessly, and, at the last count, 12,500 copies had been sold at $9.99 each since it went on sale in mid-May.

Mr Hughes, a computer sciences student at the University of Birmingham, offered his programme to Apple for sale through its official App Store, but the global tech company did not give it the stamp of approval and refused to stock it.

Undeterred, Mr Hughes found an alternative way of distributing it by using an unofficial marketplace for people who had “jail-broken” their iPhones.

Jail-breaking an iPhone means users can add programmes and applications which are not officially sanctioned by Apple – representing an estimated ten per cent of the 50 million iPhones sold worldwide.

Mr Hughes said: “The process is you make an app, you take it to Apple and they tell you whether they accept it or not and if they do they put it on their store.

“If they don’t you would assume you are out of luck, but fortunately I was able to take it elsewhere.

“Companies like Apple have a very well-timed method in the way they release features to users. So what I’ve basically done is taken a feature which I’m sure they will implement at some point in the future and just done it now.”

The second-year student said he and his friends were stunned at the success of the app.

“It’s certainly exciting to see that interest come in and coverage on all sorts of websites.

“I had this planned while I was developing it and I knew that Apple would say no, but I never thought it would sell so many copies so quickly as it’s hard to estimate how many people would be interested.

“My friends have been almost as stunned as I have at the kind of response it has generated. They’re just pleased for me it’s taken off like that.”

Despite Apple not wanting to stock his app, the US firm was still impressed enough by his technical skills to invite him to send in his CV when he graduates – but Mr Hughes is still considering what his future holds.

“I’m hoping to get my own business off the ground doing something similar iPhone apps and other platforms,” he said. “I’m definitely keeping my options open.”

For now, he has another app in the pipeline but was playing his cards close to his chest.

“All I would say is that it’s hopefully going to be on the same sort of scale as the first app,” he said.

It’s not just a question of watching the money roll in once you produce an app – around his studies, he still has to fit in supporting those people who have downloaded it.

“You have to support all the users who have bought it and also keep it updated and make sure it works on the newest iPhone, so it’s time consuming in that way. It’s not a free ride.”

* The Wi-Fi Sync app is available from Greg's website at www.getwifisync.com