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I just realized that equation could actually be true. Let me explain:

TUAW covered (rather re-re-covered) a story about DWA/iNotes ultralite for the iPhone. In the article, they mentioned that there are 140 million people using Notes.

Earlier today, I referenced another TUAW article that talked about sales figures for some of the iPhone applications. In this case, they showed that two products from a company called tap tap tap produced revenues of $52,815 in 24 days.

The current iPhone applications that run either parts, or all, of Lotus Notes mail, calendar and contacts functionality range in price from $2.99 to well over $100 plus monthly fees. And all of those apps have some goofy element of them. Either they don’t work with the iPhone’s built in calendar, mail and/or contacts applications; or they require PCs and servers to act as conduits; or they flat-out don’t always work.

So that led me to a crazy idea: why doesn’t IBM/Lotus build their own native iPhone application that integrates Lotus Notes email, calendar and contacts into the iPhone’s application set? I know, crazy isn’t it? In my idea, this would be a true application, not just a website you have to authenticate to, navigate through, etc. via your browser.

Let’s do some unrealistic math. Let’s assume all of the 140 million users bought an iPhone and paid $9.99 for the Notes application. Boom! $1,398,600,000. But that’s a big assumption.

How about some more conservative math. Let’s assume 1% of the 140 million users (1.4 million) get an iPhone and pay a fee for the application. Let’s look at some pricing models:

1.4 million X $9.99 (a low-cost price-point for the software) = $13,986,000
1.4 million X $29.99 (a fair average) = $41,986,000
1.4 million X $99 (the equivalent of GOOD’s license cost) = $138,600,000

Now, to be fair. That’s not instant revenue because you’ve got to tell businesses that the iPhone is now a device that can be supported and that they should ditch their Blackberry for it. Still, those are some big numbers and I’m going to go out on a limb here, but I don’t think it would cost them anywhere near any of those numbers to develop the software.

I could be all wrong, but I enjoy doing math. By the way, these calculations were brought to you by my iPhone.

Tags: dwa, inotes, iphone, math, ultralite

Last week someone suggested something really simple while we were at an off-site meeting (at a WiFi challenged location): “go open that file on Quickr from your iPhone.”

I have to admit, I hadn’t thought to do that before.

Oddly enough… it works pretty well! The iPhone’s ability to size your browser screen allows you to easily navigate around Quickr’s web interface. The iPhone’s ability to open just about any file type your office uses means that you can drill down to a file, open it, get the info you need and move on (here’s a YouTube video of someone doing exactly that). – How handy!

Of course, as I type this, I’m thinking it would be awesome to have an ultralite mode, but that’s sitting down a ways on my Top 10 list of things I wish Lotus had for the iPhone.

Which reminds me… an email showed up this morning from a person within Lotus (who asked to not be named beyond that) who said I should have looked more closely at the Lotus.com page regarding iPhone/iNotes functionality. My last post mentioned the inability to create calendar entries, and as this emailer mentioned, Lotus was careful to use the words “create” and “view” in a precise manner. As you can see, calendar items are mentioned only as “view” not “create.” As he jokingly wrapped up: “you need to read carefully so as not to get your hopes up.”

Tags: dwa, inotes, iphone, lotus, quickr

A number of people have emailed me to make sure I saw that Notes 8.0.2 includes the first pass at the iNotes/DWA ultra-lite mode AND that there is now an application available on iTunes called NotesCal that delivers your calendar to the iPhone.

Yes, none of this is the “golden app” us iPhone/Notes fans have been dreaming about; but, do they come close?

DWA ultralite is surprisingly good. I think Lotus did a GREAT job with the UI on this thing. However, the fact of the matter is that you’re just being pushed around web pages. While most of us haven’t had to “go get” our email on a smartphone for some time (it comes to us via Blackberry or GOOD, etc.), once you do it, its not bad to use it. The contacts are also well done with some nice icons to help guide you and take advantage of the fact that the iPhone is a phone after all (I know – it comes as a surprise to a lot of people). The calendar is OK to look at but I’m surprised how frustrating the lack of being able to create a meeting entry has been.

Enter: NotesCal. For $2.99, you can get this app which gives you your Notes calendar on the iPhone. One small catch: some assembly required. There’s an agent you need to create, a txt file you need to paste in, some potential server and ACL work and a decent sized URL you need to program into the settings. Oh, one other problem (for me): it doesn’t work. They have a short test you can do via the browser to make sure you’ve done things correct, and that worked fine for me, but the app itself didn’t.

I’m going to keep trying through… I’m willing to take a few (err… several) extra steps to piece together my Notes/iPhone worlds.

But all of this is a good sign, right? It means others have the same need and are trying to develop a resolution. To those people I say: keep fighting the good fight!

Tags: dwa, iphone, lotus, notes