Client Profile
Pointy Heads LLC is a three person team of innovative ideasmiths with a focus on helping people share their mobile lives. Pointy Heads develops applications for the key platforms in the smartphone segment, from iPhone to BlackBerry to Android and beyond, and has enjoyed early success with a popular batch of breakthrough social applications.
The Concept
Building on these successes, Pointy Heads came up with a revolutionary new concept for iPhone that would not only challenge the limitations of current smartphone technology, but redefine the nature of realtime mobile communication. They wanted to do LIVE video streaming from iPhone to iPhone.
The Challenge
The concept was straightforward enough, yet so technically ambitious that Apple's own engineers still haven't released their own streaming video application for iPhone. The chief hurdles proved to be the built-in limitations in the hardware (restricted processing power and memory), and the difficulty of adapting live video feeds to the 3G mobile network. But more significantly, the iPhone SDK was never meant to support live video streaming, so bringing Pointy Head's idea to market would entail from-scratch development. And finally, beyond the tech limitations, development time was a critical aspect of the Pointy Heads business plan.
Sourcebits Approach
After initial discussions with the client we understood that developing this application was going to be tough. Collaborating with the engineers at Pointy Heads, our Sourcebits team began a rigorous feasibility study, along the way helping the clientside team prioritize their features wishlist. To deliver the best value within the client's budget, Sourcebits proposed starting with a proof of concept (POC) phase, and upon successful completion of that, investing further toward fullscale development. Pointy Heads and Sourcebits quickly entered into NDA and contract.
Sourcebits kick started the project with the POC phase and after four intensive weeks of development delivered a working alpha to the client. Pointy Heads was extremely pleased with the result and their confidence and expectations for success grew as we agreed to begin development of version 1.0.
As in the preliminary consultation, Sourcebits worked closely with the Pointy Heads team to finalize the feature list for version 1.0. A list too long would lead to increased development time and potential loss of value for the client, whereas a list too short could disappoint end users and lead to commercial failure. After extensive discussion, an initial feature set was fixed and Sourcebits accelerated development of the private (and restricted) APIs necessary for version 1.0.
At that stage the question at the back of everyone's mind was where Apple would come down on the issue of these private APIs.
12 sleepless weeks later, Sourcebits released an internal alpha for testing among employees and the Pointy Heads team, generating valuable feedback from a large group before public launch. The internal feedback led to several key enhancements for the 1.0 release as well as a to-do list of features for subsequent point releases.
Sourcebits submitted version 1.0 to the App Store on December 2nd , 2009. There were some initial hurdles as App Store reviewers initially rejected the application but the technology behind the live streaming video proved so compelling that Steve Jobs personally intervened to grant approval for the release.
And it turned out to be an extraordinary launch. Version 1.0 received wide coverage in the media and within 24 hours rocketed to the Top 50 with more than eighty thousand registrations in four days. With the initial release a huge hit and bringing valuable brand recognition to Pointy Heads, the Sourcebits team quickly began work on a series of technical point releases to improve security and performance while paving the way for increased scalability and added functionality.
The Future
Sourcebits and Pointy Heads successfully published this revolutionary application to the App Store after just five months of development. During that time, Sourcebits also had secondary teams working on ports of this application for the other major smartphone platforms. In addition, Sourcebits will continue to support the app with rich feature additions and increased scalability in line with the client's long term vision.
The Advantages of Sourcebits
Experience
Sourcebits' strength in Mac and iPhone application development helped guide the client toward a robust project architecture with elegant, easy to understand interaction design. Our in depth knowledge of the publishing proccess insured the application would not only be published, but also garnered a valuable dose of media exposure.
Collaborative Approach
Each step of the way, the client team was in constant touch with Sourcebits project managers and engineers to collaborate on various technical aspects and work up the feature set. Before public release both teams tested internal versions and worked together to produce valuable enhancements based on the combined feedback.
Fast Time to Deployment
Sourcebits developed a breakthrough, next-generation application in — incredibly — just five months.
Cost Savings
The Sourcebits team worked closely with the client team to maximize the feature set within the desired schedule, with the end product delivered on time and on budget.