Wellington app to get global exposure
Sidhe-developed application used in iPod Touch advertisement.
Wednesday, November 30 2011 || News || BY Claire Rogers, The Dominion Post
The consumer electronics giant is also using an app developed by local firm Sidhe in an iPod Touch ad.
The CoachPad app lets sports coaches demonstrate tactics and formations to their teams and, in the iPad 2 ad, which is expected to screen locally, is being used by a basketball coach.
AlphaSprite director Andrew Empson said he and business partner Angus Deacon, who both work as designers, had signed a release giving Apple the rights to feature the app in a commercial a while ago, but did not expect anything to come of it.
"They quite often do that, but then you never hear back again. They didn't tell us they'd used it – we just found it on the Apple website.
"It's been a nice surprise. We've got an email saying they're rolling it out across the world and they've asked us to localise the app for French, German, Korean and Japanese [languages]."
Mr Empson said the app supported sports including rugby, football, badminton and Aussie Rules. It has been used by South African sevens coach Paul Treu.
"We've made it as simple as possible so dads who are coaches can use it too."
CoachPad, which sells for US$4.99 (NZ$6.49 in New Zealand), had been downloaded more than 25,500 times and the ad would hopefully boost sales, he said. "Apple ads get pretty good coverage and they get good time slots."
Mario Wynands, managing director of Sidhe, said Apple had featured its FlickKick Field Goal game – which challenges players to "kick" American football field goals by flicking their fingers across the touchscreen – in an iPod Touch commercial now on YouTube.
He was unsure when it would appear on television in the United States or if it would hit TV screens here.
Apple's ad had helped boost downloads of the game, as it coincided with Thanksgiving – a big football weekend in the US.
The US99c version of the game had been downloaded almost a million times, Mr Wynands said.
