I was talking to a friend of mine who works for a city council recently. The council is a local government body with some elected officials and a decent budget – a portion of which it spends on local initiatives, business councils, arts project and community development. The council is the central council for a large-ish city area which includes approximately 30-odd ‘neighbourhoods’. By neighbourhoods, I mean those divisions that make groups of people and businesses feel like they have things in common. From a business perspective, all the good commercial community stuff that leads to them creating business associations or chambers of commerce. Mind you, bear in mind that we are talking about relatively tiny districts that are likely to have less than 2,000 businesses in the area and maybe only 50 - 100 members of the (very local) chamber of commerce. Beyond all this fascinating demographic information about the structure of the city, where is this story going?

As mentioned, the council gives grants for arts projects, new media development, community building and the like. In the last six months or so, of the 30 various business associations that exist, around 60% of them have applied for funding to develop an iPhone application.

Yes, 20 chambers of commerce each representing around 70 businesses, all want their very own individual iPhone application.

When I heard this, I was horrified. What a waste of money! What a duplication of effort! And, given the demographic of the target market (transient shoppers, local business owners ad shop keepers), what a misdirected foray into the mobile space this would be!

Ah, but what a sexy, misguided foray!

And here lies the issue. Right now, a very large percentage of companies, businesses and brands are all suffering from i-blindness – the need to have an iPhone (or iPad) application that they can show off to people as gorgeous and sexy – whether it is the right thing to do or not.

Let’s try and all take a big deep breath. Yes, iPhone is a huge seller. Yes, the iPad is a very beautiful device to have on your knee while watching television. Yes, having your very own brand with its little icon the screen can give you a really warm and ‘with-it’ feeling. But it really isn’t always likely to give you much more than that.

There is definitely a right time and place for an iApplication. If your target market is highly mobile, trendy, style conscious and likely to use your service. If your mobile service really needs to use features of the phone that require an application to be running (such as special access to GPS or the address book, or camera). If you need to provide an application that can still deliver when 100 meters underground or in the air (or basically, whenever it can’t find a network or any kind). Or if you need to build in such security that you only allow access to your services via an encrypted secure connection.

There seems to be a huge section of the market that is uninterested in reaching out to the 90% of Australians without iDevices. Those consumers who might still want to get information, get updates, find out the scores, read the news or check out a house price. I would suggest that for most brands, companies and businesses – having a decent mobile presence through a mobile tailored internet site would be a start. Note I said ‘decent’. It doesn’t even need to be good. Having a site that recognises the incoming device (not hard) and selectes the right screen format (straightforward) and the right layout and navigation options (easily do-able) would suit both iPhone users and those with ‘substandard’ devices (ie, anything not iRelated). I won’t even start on thinking more broadly about handsets in general; the dominance of Nokia, the importance of Blackberry and the ongoing rise in Android devices.

And these 20 or so chambers of commerce? What about them? In most of their cases, having a web site would be a good start – and they can work on mobilising this after that. But starting with an iPhone application is not thinking about your audience, only your ego.

iPhone apps are the new black. But it isn’t a colour that is right for anyone.