It appears there’s less and less noise about local startups at least in the web world. You’d think the slumping economy would have people coding away, but apparently not. However, a few have moved their focus to developing for the mobile platform, the iPhone. Let’s face it, the iPhone is hot around the globe and even hotter in Hong Kong. Developing iPhone apps could mean instant success and cash for the developers whereas building web apps can take much longer, just what most local entrepreneurs are after, instant cash. They’d be dreaming but here are a couple startups who are offering both free and paid apps for users to download.

Stepcase appeared to have put their productivity web service aside to focus on building iPhone apps and have already launched four free and paid apps. Enroute, Lifehack, Meeting Time, SteadyCam, a mix of productivity and fun apps.

Another is the Walkamap team, who previously worked on Ruby on Rails projects and has been active in the local RoR gatherings. Their move to iPhone has been with their Walkamap Hong Kong app, a location based app that allows users to find nearby restaurants, pubs, and other establishments. And according to their website, they have also partnered with FON HK so FON users can use their service to easily locate FON access points.

All these seem to be handy services (I wouldn’t know because I don’t own an iPhone yet) but the money is made with games on the iPhone or is it? Maybe in the US and from my observation, iPhone is more a mobile data/camera/music device than a gaming device in Hong Kong. Nintendo’s NDS Lite and Sony’s PSP are still the leaders in mobile gaming here, but this makes for another entry.

Possible related posts:

• Office 2.0 Conference 2007
• iPhone 3GS available now in Hong Kong
• 6 waves - SNS app publisher
• Hong Kong Web startup meetup