KEY POINTS:
Software developer Peter Watling has landed a unique new job: using his iPhone programming skills to help companies market themselves using the ground-breaking mobile device.
Watling - who has 22 years experience programming Apple devices, and is a passionate iPhone user - has joined specialist digital marketing agency AIM Proximity as the firm's "mobile technologist".
The role involves him thinking up programs and services to run on the iPhone that will promote AIM Proximity's clients to consumers.
Watling has spent the past 12 years working for the MetService where he oversaw technology developments including more user-friendly presentation of weather information and the development of a TV guide and weather application for the iPhone. He is also the creator of the "Bubblewrap" game, one of the most popular downloads by iPhone users round the world.
AIM Proximity CEO Darryn Melrose said the combination of the iPhone's ease of use and Vodafone's move to drop the price of mobile internet data to as low as $1 a day made the iPhone "a game-changer in the market".
Consumer enthusiasm for the iPhone had prompted AIM Proximity to hire Watling, a move which Melrose said was, as far as he knew, the first time in the world a marketing agency had appointed its own in-house iPhone developer. Having Watling on staff would allow the agency develop innovative mobile marketing strategies based on the iPhone, he said.
"Agencies tend to wait for a brief, whereas in this case we're not doing that, we're saying there's a great opportunity out there, it's not going to come if we sit and wait for a brief. This is about being proactive and showing some initiative."
Watling said iPhone owners wanted to use the devices in as many ways as possible and spent much more time using them, and downloaded much more data than owners of other brands of cellphone.
"There's a lot of demand to put programs on there to do things you would otherwise have to find a computer to do," he said.
"Anyone who has one uses it an awful lot. Because you're carrying it in your pocket the phone lends itself to doing quick things like looking up information, so the more programs you have to provide information at people's fingertips - literally - the more useful it becomes." The iPhone's GPS functionality opened up other possibilities for program writing.
"It could do a quick ping, find out exactly what the temperature is where you're sitting and show you something that's related to your whole environment, not just your location." One marketing application offered free over the iPhone downloading service provided by Apple which has proven popular internationally with users has been a promotion for Carling beer called iPint. It is a simple game which involve sliding a virtual beer across a bar into the hands of another drinker. iPhone users who successfully complete the game are rewarded by their device's screen being filled with beer which they can pretend to drink. The beer image is drained by tipping the device's tilt-sensitive screen upside-down.
Melrose said AIM Proximity was working on its own brand-related applications for the iPhone but he would not give details until the programs were released.
"While other devices claim to have bridged the gap between PCs and mobile phones, the iPhone has truly conquered it, providing a compelling immediacy to mobile internet.
"The challenge for marketers is to deliver on this heightened level of customer expectation, with richer dialogue and targeted relevant campaigns."
