IITians `flirt` with Apple for iPhone networking

Apple’s next killer application for the iPhone could justify its price-tag among the harshest of critics. The iPhone has had something for every user, but to take social networking to the next level, the services of a Bangalore firm were needed.

Endeavour Software Technologies, started in 2002 by a motley crew of IIT Kanpur grads, is currently developing iFlirt, a promising application designed to move the iPhone user from the periphery of the mobile network to right to its centre. With this, third party application development for the legendary device out of India is set to speed up.

iFlirt seeks to combine multiple features of the iPhone - the GPS (Geographical Positioning System) to let your friends know where you are and vice versa while chatting, share music through a dedicated interface, detect compatible album and song lists.

The app will also search for a user who has those Judas Priest lyrics you were looking for and instantly download them to your iPhone.

The application is currently under development and is set for a November release in the US.

“iFlirt works on the peer-to-peer networking principle, but, more importantly, amplifies existing iPhone applications. We have completed work on the interface and are working on issues like backups and music provisioning,” says Manish Garg, co-founder and director, Endeavour Software Tech.

The company’s iPhone Lab in Bangalore has 15 engineers and SDK programmers dedicated to working on applications like iFlirt for AT&T, the primary iPhone distributor in the US.

Endeavour, which clocked $1.5 million revenues in FY08, has worked on creating mobile data collection solutions in the banking, mobility and enterprise verticals for the likes of Pepsi, Unilever, Dell and Verizon.

“Yes, the idea is right out of Salesforce.com. When we started off, there was the real temptation to adopt Salesforce.com’s web-enabled business model. Looking back, it’s nice to know that we made the right decision in seeking out our fortunes in the mobility consulting space instead,” Garg reminisces.

The company has two patents under its belt and three more pending.

The iFlirt program, under development for the last two months, is expected to absorb $150,000 in research and development costs. Garg expects the initial user base for this program in the first few weeks of its US launch to touch 1 million.

The iPhone has so far combined two products — mobile phone and widescreen iPod — with feather- touch controls, and a Internet communications device with desktop-class email, Safari Web browser, GIS maps, and search abilities.

iFlirt will harness the feature-intensity of the handset to completely redefine what the user can do on a mobile phone. iFlirt’s new user interface, based on the large multi-touch display and pioneering new software, will enable wider social control at the touch of the user’s fingers.