iPhone App for Sailing and Boating

If you’re a regular reader of Harbour Exchange, you already know I’m an apple addict and my iPhone is like a member of the family. I love playing with new applications, especially if they involve all things nautical.

The iPhone stats are impressive:

133,979 applications for download in the App Store

28,000 App Developers

iPhone users download an average of 4.8 Apps per month each

75% of Apps downloaded are free, with only 25% paid for

Including all free Apps, the average price per App is £1.69

Each App Store user spends an average of £2.73 per month on Apps

In December 2009, $250 Million in revenue was generated, over 70% of which went to the developers themselves.

For a couple of interesting images showing the wonder of the iPhone and Apps business click One and Two.

With a cut of $250M on offer each month it is no wonder that developers with a passion for sailing are creating offerings for us addicts to feed our habits. But are these any good? In the previous post ‘Top Sailing Applications for the iPhone’ I said I’d be unlikely to use any of the Apps on board, especially if it is rough and wet (which is normal in the UK!) and I’d add that trying to use an iPhone with sailing gloves would be like trying to thread a needle with boxing gloves on; definitely not something I’d do with a ‘member of my family’.

Nevertheless, there are uses for the Apps while on dry land, not least of which is to help learn the dreaded Colregs for the RYA Yachtmaster Exams. So when Harbour Echange was sent a message by Aqualights on Twitter letting me know about their new App I thought I’d take a look.

AquaLights – £3.49 from the App Store

In their marketing message on their website they say:

Never be confused by a vessel’s lights again. AquaLights contains an extensive database of modern navigational lights, which can easily be search using our innovative 3-light drilldown system.

Massive Depth
AquaLights contains hundreds of navigational lights in its database covering inland waters, rivers and the Great Lakes.

Quick & Easy
Simply enter the top three lights you see. AquaLights does the rest and presents you with its best guess(es) at what you’re seeing.

By Mariners for Mariners
AquaLights has been tested extensivly to ensure that quality is top notch. We’ve made sure that its best guess is the right guess.

What do we think?

This looks interesting. For anyone who has sailed at night will know, it really can be very hard to know what all the shining lights and reflections mean. A friend of mine was sailing out of Milford Haven at night and thought the lights were just one of the static rigs, only to discover it was a very large moving object heading straight for him. Thankfully disaster was averted but you get the point.

Anything that can help us be safer at night has to be a good thing and AquaLights can help. The developers claim that it’s database will give you a number of options for any light configuration, and that’s probably the best you can hope for since this cannot be a precise science. The input interface looks clear and easy to use and the output will certainly help any student learn the Colregs.

You’ll notice that I say the ‘developers claim…’ and ‘the input interface looks….easy to use…’. That’s because I haven’t bought this App – for one very good reason. You see, when 75% of Apps are free and when the average App costs £1.69, and when my average spend per month is £2.73, I just cannot justify spending £3.49 on this App. That is more than double the average cost or 30% more than the average monthly user spend.

Compared to the cost of boating it is a drop in the ocean and most of us could afford it, but then compared to a Sunseeker, a Ford Fiesta is like the loose change you’d find down the back of your sofa, so that’s not the point. The point is that compared to some other sailing Apps that are either free or 59p each, it is very, very expensive.

iPhone Sailing App – Aqualights

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