(POLL) Two rental car iphone apps released this year – one fromglobal giant Hertz, and the other from local rental car company Apex, pose thequestion as to whether apps are the new platform for businesses.

An app that enables clients to check availability, book acar, and even change the details from their iphone, is well suited to abusiness such as rental cars, where potential customers are by their verydefinition mobile.

Apex director Ricki Shaw clams that it takes less than aminute to book an Apex car, and certainly when Telecommunications Review gave it a try it was very easy (unfortunatelyall the cars were booked out on the dates we wanted!). The Hertz app was a lotslower, but it was providing cars for a raft of international destinations, notjust New Zealand towns and cities.

Shaw says the secret to creating an app is to think about itfrom a user’s perspective, to get inside the head space of your client: “Whendesigning the App we wanted to make it so efficient to use that even a busyexecutive would prefer to make their own car rental reservations, rather thanget their PA to do it for them.”

Since it was accepted into the iTunes store on 6 January, the Apex app has been downloaded about 300 times, and threebookings have been made via the app. The company has around 3,500 vehicles butShaw says it is the busiest time of year so availability is scarce.

According to Shaw, 2010 will be a “watershed year” in whichsmartphones will become a ubiquitous device – not only for business people butconsumers too, especially travellers and tourists.

He says it took about three weeks to develop theapp and, aside from staff time, the cost was the standard $299 to download the developer’s kit from theApple website. Apex is currently working on an app for the Google Androidplatform.