• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, January 4, 2010

Companies like WordPress and Six Apart created popular tools to let anyone become a blogger. Now startup PointAbout wants to do the same for building iPhone applications with a new service called AppMakr.

Where developing iPhone apps can typically cost upward of $10,000 and take weeks or months to build, AppMakr promises to deliver a quality app in less than an hour for only $199. Users of the online service, formally launched today, enter a site Web site address or keywords and get back a sample iPhone app built with that content in less than 30 seconds, according to PointAbout.

Publishers can then customize the app further by adding feeds from services like Twitter, Flickr or YouTube and tailor graphics including the icon, splash screen and tabs. (The main screen will contain an AppMakr logo regardless.) On top of that, the do-it-yourself apps can be monetized by selling them via iTunes or enabling advertising through ad networks like AdMob, Medialets or Google AdSense.

"We are very excited about this launch," said Sean Shadmand, chief strategy officer of Washington, D.C.-based PointAbout, in a statement. "We have created a service that enables easy content distribution to the iPhone in a highly monetizable way."

For $499, users can also publish completely under their own brand and gain more control over app development through more extensive testing. Under this option, publishers set up their own Apple developer accounts, but the building, provisioning and management of apps is still handled by AppMakr.

Appcelerator offers a similar platform that allows marketers and agencies to take app development into their own hands. Last October, the company launched a partner program with agencies including Razorfish, TMA and Tribal DDB that provides software and support for creating iPhone and Android apps in-house more quickly and efficiently than outsourcing the task. But even that program only promises to reduce development time from six months to two to four weeks -- not to under an hour.

Fueling the emergence of such turnkey services is the view that mobile apps are the latest media platform where brands need to have a presence. There are currently more than 100,000 iPhone/iPod apps and 20,000 Android apps. And mobile app downloads are expected to more than double to 5 billion in 2014, according to a recent forecast by ABI Research.

PointAbout has previously developed custom iPhone apps for clients including The Washington Post, Gannett and Burger King. The company has been testing AppMakr by creating iPhone apps for prominent bloggers including Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin and Robert Scoble. To encourage others to try the new service, PointAbout is offering a $99 discount coupon through Jan. 15 to the first 1,000 AppMakr users.