I attended a presentation of a toolset to facilitate IOS native app development with domino data access today and was working through the practicalities and costs of implementing an application based on this technology and Domino Xwork server. Given the license implications per app and per annum that seem to be the norm with development kits these days – its actually getting difficult to justify the costs of starting an application development project – when the cost of the ancilliary items is probably more than the cost of developing the app.
What makes this even harder to sell is that even businesses who have already invested in Domino and who have native notes or xpages apps will be shocked to learn the costs of developing native apps for IOS. I certainly wonder whether clients will be tempted away from xpages mobile apps which they can get without additional licensing or maintenance costs.
However the product does what it says and the development environment is easy enough for an irregular developer like me to appreciate and its another route to market for applications. What remains is the extra work in selling due to the increased costs – perhaps offset by the time savings that the SDK introduces.