How many apps do you have on your iPhone or Android? Chances are that at least one of them was made by someone under 20. Now more than ever, the younger generation is taking on the increasingly mobile, technology-centric world we live in. Many teenagers are taking advantage of the digital age’s newfound accessibility, jump-starting their careers by developing and coding mobile applications of their own.
Nick D’Aloisio, an 18-year-old British entrepreneur, has already made a debut with his app, Summly. Summly is an iOS and Android application that summarizes news stories from popular media that are tailored to the user’s interests. He came up with the idea for the app during his exam studies when he was “required to research a vast amount of webpages.” Nick realized that he was “browsing a lot of pages that were, in fact, irrelevant to the task,” and in doing so wasting a lot of his time. A self-taught programmer, Nick learned how to code using C for Dummies and online videos. He created his first app in 2008 at age 12 and had to submit it to the App Store under his father’s name since he was four years too young to meet the store’s minimum age for developers. D’Aloisio developed a new app every summer break for the next few years; in 2011, the then-15-year-old developed Trimit, the app which was relaunched a few months later as Summly.
As of March 2013, Summly was sold to Yahoo for $30 million, making D’Aloisio one of the youngest self-made millionaires ever.
Another successful, teen-developed app is Finish. Ryan Orbuch and Michael Hansen, both 16, created the anti-procrastination iOS app, which launched earlier this year. After just a month, Finish had over 20,000 downloads. To put this in perspective: there are more than 1 million apps in Apple’s App Store, and two-thirds of those get fewer than 1,000 downloads in their first year. With a unit price of 99 cents, this app is bringing in quite a profit for its young developers. When Finish won the 2013 Apple Design Award, it was like the two teens hitting the jackpot.
The pair came up with Finish as they dealt with their stress over finals during their sophomore year at Boulder High School. The idea was to help people deal with procrastination. For months they worked on interface, design, and development. “We’ve seen Finish work for an amazing variety of people, from high school students to lawyers, doctors to real estate agents, writers to entrepreneurs, and tons more,” Orbuch said. “Though the app was built by students, it wasn’t built to be school-specific. Finish is essentially a framework, it’s an app that provides the perfect amount of structure to truly reduce stress and ease procrastination for just about anyone.”
Technology is a huge part of our lives as Hewitt students. We use our laptops daily to keep track of our notes, write essays, manage sites, etc. Will a Hewitt student be the next APPrentice?