Dunedin may become home to a software company generating iPhone applications if a former Dunedin man gets his way
CandyCane Applications co-owner Michael Bevin (31) is home for a Christmas holiday with family and friends, and while here is investigating the potential for establishing his company.
The former University of Otago Bachelor of Computer Science (Honours) graduate is the audio and video programming team leader for Skype (an internet-based telephone system) at its headquarters in Estonia.
But in his spare time, he creates games which can be downloaded to iPhones.
His most recent game application, Fling, has been the No 1 selling application in most countries since it was launched four months ago.
"In four months, it has been downloaded four million times - it had over 15,000 sales in a single day when it was the most popular application in the AppStore," he said.
He also created Fuzzle, which made the list of the top 100 applications.
Mr Bevin has been programming computers since he was a boy.
His first game was a chess program created while a John McGlashan College pupil.
After graduating from the University of Otago, he worked in Germany as a programmer.
While working on an audio program, he came to the attention of Skype and was lured by the company to Estonia to continue his programming work there.
However, Mr Bevin said the cold weather there was one of the reasons he was investigating a return home.
There was no time frame on the move yet, but he was interested in speaking to University of Otago computer programming graduates while he was here, to gauge interest in helping him establish his company.
Mr Bevin hoped he would be able to continue his iPhone applications programming in Dunedin on a full-time basis rather than in his spare time as he does now.
