Dreamcube's UiRemote
Dreamcube has come a long way since winning the 2009 Upstart Competition, the conclusion to CIBC Presents Entrepreneurship 101, MaRS flagship educational program, this spring. The company’s got a new name, a new CEO, new funding and newly acquired approval from Apple to develop the hardware portion of UiRemote, the world’s only universal remote for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Until recently, hardware development for the iPhone was restricted to big fish in the gadget pond, but changes to Apple’s model for third party accessory development have created opportunities for smaller companies, like Dreamcube, to create and distribute hardware with Apple’s approval. And with a $10,000 prize from the Upstart Competition and funding from Ontario Centres of Excellence and the Business Mentorship and Entrepreneurship Program, Dreamcube is poised to jump right in.
“There are over 50,000 software apps for the iPhone, but Apple is now pushing for new hardware apps,” says Paul Vice, CEO of Dreamcube. The UiRemote has received hardware license approval from Apple, so Dreamcube engineers are working to integrate an Apple authentication chip into the hardware and tweak the package to fit with Apple’s specifications. After these changes are made, the hardware and software will be submitted to Apple for final approval. The Dreamcube team hopes to launch the UiRemote in spring 2010.
Vice acknowledges that things can progress quickly in the land of start-ups. He credits the speed of Dreamcube’s development to three things: “When you bring the right people, the right skill set and the right invention together, things just happen.”
Vanessa is a writer at MaRS.
She writes all kinds of things, like posts for the MaRS blog, articles for Convergence (the MaRS magazine) and the weekly MaRS eNewsletter.
