A Vietnamese college student has made himself
a fortune by developing an application for Blackberry smartphones.
Nguyen
Long, a mechanical engineering senior at the Ho Chi Minh City University of
Technology, finished writing the application – SayIt, a speech recognition
software – in January without thinking it would become a top-paid app three
months later on the Blackberry App World, a platform that allows BB users to
download apps for their smartphones.
SayIt
quickly made it to the top ten paid apps after being released for just one
week. It now sells for US$4.99 on the platform.
The app
has been downloaded for around 6,000 times during the first three months, half
of the number coming from the U.S. and Canada.
Research
In Motion, the Canadian producer of Blackberry smartphones, has pocketed 30
percent of the VND600 million (US$29,000) paid by BB users while the rest, a
huge sum to a student, has been credited to Long’s account.
“I’m
just curious about software,” the student, who is definitely not a software
engineer, explains why he got into the software development field.
“I saw
many people create apps for smartphones, and I wanted to be like them.”
He
started with a coding tutorial downloaded from the Internet when he was a
second-year student.
“I
studied it myself, tried writing different apps, and then got used to the coding
work after a time,” Long says.
The
student failed to earn any money from 16 apps he had earlier written for BB
devices before notching up a success with SayIt.
He put
in a lot of hours and sweat to build the software which is “the only one to
recognize voices on the BB platform.”
“SayIt
has no rivals there, as a result,” he says.
Long
said he still wanted to work in the mechanical engineering area but “everything
may change if [he] comes up with a good business idea.”
Basic
functions of the SayIt app:
1.
Respond to verbal instructions to search for and provide requested information
about weather conditions and the locations of hotels, bars and other
facilities.
2. A BB
user can use his/her voice to compose new emails or messages and open other
applications on their smartphone.
3.
SayIt can help convert text to speech, and vice versa, and save the converted
text in the MP3 format.
TUOI
TRE
Business & Investment Opportunities
YourVietnamExpert is a division of Saigon Business Corporation Pte Ltd, Incorporated in Singapore since 1994. As Your Business Companion, we propose a range of services in Strategy, Investment and Management, focusing Healthcare and Life Science with expertise in ASEAN. We also propose Higher Education, as a bridge between educational structures and industries, by supporting international programmes. Many thanks for visiting www.yourvietnamexpert.com and/or contacting us at contact@yourvietnamexpert.com
Dear
Reader,
May I
invite you to visit our new blog: IIMS-Asean http://iims-asean.blogspot.com/
News
and activities of the International Institute of Medicine and Science Asean
Chapter of IIMS, Inc. California, USA - Health care, Life Science, Education,
Research, Philanthropy. Asean is the economic organisation of ten countries
located in South East Asia: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR,
Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. IIMS is a
non-profit organization.
No comments:
Post a Comment