iFund Blog Set Up for More Clarification

At its March 6 event in Cupertino, this year, Apple threw a bombshell called the “App Store”. In relation to the App Store, Apple's chief exec also mentioned something called the iFund. The initiative was to dedicate $100 million to companies that want to develop new applications for the iPhone / iPod touch, but no specific details were offered. Most recently though, the iFund got its very own blog - iFundVC.

“Today we’re launching the iFund blog,” say the generous folks behind the initiative. “The purpose is to share (and hear) perspectives around the iPhone and emerging open mobile ecosystem. We’ve been blown away by the amount of entrepreneurial activity in mobile since launching the iFund on March 6th. In 6 months, we’ve received over 2700 plans. To put it in context, that’s about 20x what we received in a similar period last year. Out of that group, we’ve funded five companies totaling more than $30M of investment.”

According to the blog post, those companies are Pelago – social discovery and location sharing through an application called Whrrl; iControl – a home automation and monitoring solution available in Q1; ng:moco – iPhone games launching its first titles this month; GOGII – a new social interaction and marketing platform, launching in Q4, and an unannounced venture launching in Q1.

“The purpose of this blog is to create a forum for dialogue around the impactful trends and observations as the promise of open mobile is being fulfilled,” the members add. “From time to time, we’ll have various KP partners and execs from our mobile companies contribute to this blog which should broaden the scope and perspective,” reads the post.

The same piece explains how the iFund will do its best to push quality apps forward, meaning that the best apps are going to get the most funding. However, with the recent controversy surrounding the venue, we can only keep our fingers crossed for this to become a reality.