app developer

The biggest mobile show in the world is hosting its first event dedicated specially for Apple developers next year. Mobile World Congress, which takes place each February in Barcelona, Spain, will add MacWorld Mobile to its new slate of events focused on developers, who make the small software programs or apps that have become key to phone makers' fortunes.

Apple itself never participates in wider industry events like MWC or the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas but prefers to stage its own shows, which attract huge amounts of media attention.

Google reported last week that while it plans to discontinue its Wave service it will save Google Wave as a stand-alone application. The service will lose its integration with Gmail, but will still give active Wave participants a place to use and modify new and existing Wave’s after the service shuts down at the end of the year.

An iPhone app developer Tapulous has been purchased by Walt Disney Co as announced Thursday. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. As of December Tapulous was profitable with sales being $1 million a month.

Under the terms of the agreement Tapulous founders Bart Decrem and Andrew Lacy and their development team will join the Disney Interactive Media Group. Decrem and Lacy will be leading Disney's mobile gaming business from Palo Alto, California, where Tapulous is based.

"Disney sees this as the future and so do we," Decrem said.

As Apple started selling its computer tablet iPad the number of developers interested in creating applications for the device rapidly declined. Before Steve Jobs unveiled iPad a survey of developers by webdesktopmobile kit maker Appcelerator indicated that 90% of them wanted to build app for the Apple tablet. Later the number has dropped to 80%.