Dig­i­tal Busi­ness, a Trinida­di­an tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny, has cre­at­ed and launched the first-ever steel­pan mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tion ("app" for the tech-savvy. App is short for ap­pli­ca­tion. It is a piece of soft­ware that can run on the In­ter­net, com­put­er, phone or an­oth­er com­pat­i­ble elec­tron­ic de­vice.) The app, which has been down­loaded more tham 5,000 times and was cre­at­ed with the per­mis­sion of pan's gov­ern­ing body, Pan Trin­ba­go, has placed this coun­try on the dig­i­tal app map. The in­ven­tion is not just a game chang­er be­cause a Trinida­di­an com­pa­ny cre­at­ed an app of the na­tion­al in­stru­ment but al­so be­cause it proves to many lo­cal tech en­thu­si­asts that grab­bing a piece of the glob­al USD $15 bil­lion dol­lar app mar­ket is firm­ly with­in their reach.

"It is not easy to be unique in a mo­bile app space but we have done well with more than 20,000 down­loads for all of our apps," said Quin­ten Ques­tel the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Dig­i­tal Busi­ness, a Curepe based com­pa­ny that em­ploys 15. The pan app gives users full ac­cess to the range of pans; from tenor to gui­tar, it al­lows them to lay­er mu­sic and gives com­posers the op­por­tu­ni­ty to record pan mu­sic from any­where. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, those not able to af­ford an ac­tu­al steel­pan can get ac­cess to one with­out hav­ing to spend on the re­al thing. So in­no­v­a­tive was Ques­tel and Mail­lard's work it cap­tured the at­ten­tion of Mi­crosoft Trinidad and To­ba­go, which is cur­rent­ly on a mis­sion to woo soft­ware de­vel­op­ers and de­vel­op a vi­brant lo­cal ap­pli­ca­tions in­dus­try.

"Mo­bile apps ex­tends the use of tech­nol­o­gy from desk­tops to your portable smart de­vices, broad­en­ing the scope and ap­pli­ca­tion of tech­nol­o­gy in your dai­ly lives," says Neeala Ma­haraj-Racha, Mi­crosoft Trinidad and To­ba­go's De­vel­op­ment Plat­form evan­ge­list. "We know the fu­ture is here and that tablets, as well as smart­phones, are what con­sumers are de­mand­ing," says Ma­haraj-Racha, who added that the com­pa­ny was ex­cit­ed and en­cour­aged when they saw what Mail­lard and Ques­tel did with the in­stru­ment and its im­pli­ca­tion for busi­ness de­vel­op­ment. "It pro­vides tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ty for them as in­no­va­tors and busi­ness lead­ers to tap in­to the fastest grow­ing mo­bile mar­ket, and it pro­vides us with the chance to share and tap in­to the glob­al mar­ket­place with oth­er coun­tries that have sim­i­lar Win­dows Phone De­vices."

By any mea­sure, the rise in the in­ter­est in de­vel­op­ing mo­bile apps is strik­ing and that may be be­cause sup­port is now avail­able and con­di­tions are prime. First, there is the con­ver­gence of the app ecosys­tem, which presents a world with more pow­er­ful de­vices, high­er qual­i­ty net­works and high-res­o­lu­tion cam­era.

New de­vel­op­ments such as Win­dows 8 and the Win­dows phone plat­form al­low de­vel­op­ers to quick­ly see the po­ten­tial in lo­cal app de­vel­op­ment reach­ing off­shore mar­kets. Pro­grammes like Mi­crosoft's DreamSpark al­lows stu­dents ac­cess to free soft­ware en­abling them the pow­er to de­vel­op apps for Win­dows Phone and oth­er plat­forms at no charge. And then there is Yal­la Apps, the new Win­dows phone glob­al pub­lish­er for mo­bile apps de­vel­op­ers in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, which pro­vides en­tre­pre­neurs with an av­enue to cre­ate and pub­lish in a glob­al mar­ket­place. "Win­dows Phone Glob­al Pub­lish­er Pro­gram en­ables de­vel­op­ers world­wide to work with a glob­al pub­lish­er to sub­mit apps to the Win­dows phone mar­ket­place. In ad­di­tion to pub­lish­ing apps, Yal­la Apps sup­ports de­vel­op­ers with oth­er needs like un­lock­ing Win­dows phone de­vices for de­bug­ging and test­ing ap­pli­ca­tions," said Ma­haraj-Racha.