NEW SOFTWARE SECTOR

The arrival of the Apple iPhone has created an entire new software development sector, practically overnight, with a host of new companies creating apps for the device to be sold on Apple’s online store. Grab Radio is one start-up jostling for a slice of this lucrative market.
Established two years ago, the company‘s software allows people to identify a song when they are listening to the radio on the iPhone and, if they wish, buy it from Apple’s iTunes Store with the push of a button. Last week the company signed what the Business Post described as one of its most significant deals to date in a partnership agreement with Texas-based Radio Time that will greatly increase the number of radio stations with which its software can be used.
“With the first version of Grab Radio, we had to go through a process of dealing with every radio station individually,” said co-founder and managing director Aonghus O hEocha. “Radio Time have developed a technology that allows us to by-pass that whole process and use the streams that they have procured from various radio stations worldwide. The figure that we are up to now is 35,000 and that will rise to 40,000 stations in a very short period of time.”
The deal is likely to push the company onto a new level of trading. While Radio Grab has had 30,000 downloads since the beginning of the year, Radio Time recorded 50 million listening sessions in the month of May alone.