Snappy Lab founder, John Papandriopoulos, is on the road to becoming wealthy after selling his Snappycam app to Apple which promoted the application to the top selling camera app for the iPhone.
The exact figure paid by Apple, is estimated at a few millions of dollars, according to Australian news sources.
Dr John Papandriopoulos, 35, developed the Snappycam app with the aim to optimise the iPhone camera performance, but managed to turn it to a full action camera, capable of shooting 20-30 high quality photos every second, a speed significantly higher than the phone’s burst mode.
Soon after the project was launched, tech giants and investors of the tech coterie expressed interest in acquiring it. Users welcomed the product which had already sold tens of thousands of copies at the 99-cent price.
According to Dr Papandriopoulos, his invention can turn out to be quite useful for everyday photography especially when taking photos of kids and pets, which never seem to sit still or even for people who want to analyse their swings in golf and softball.
The eminent app developer started writing software at the age of 12 and has his father – who pursued electronic engineering studies before moving to Melbourne in 1956- to thank for inheriting his passion for technology.
“When I learned how to connect electronics to the computer, and control it through the joy stick and printer ‘ports’ I was really hooked”, he said to Neos Kosmos in an interview last September.
While studying for his PhD at the University of Melbourne, he created an algorithm to increase the speed in ADSL connections. His project impressed Stanford University engineering professor John Cioffi, who was one of the external experts reviewing the research- Dr. Cioffi, known by some as the “father of the DSL modems”, offered Mr. Papandriopoulos a position at his start-up company, ASSIA, at Silicon Valley.
Having won the US Green Card Lottery gaining permanent US residency, Melbourne – raised John Papandriopoulos has been living in Silicon Valley, California for the past five and a half years.
The Snappycam application has been removed from Apple’s iTunes site and the SnappyLabs website is inaccessible, thus fuelling rumours that the software will in the near future be incorporated into iPhones as a standard app for free.
Sources: Fairfax Media, Herald Sun