WWDC 2026: Amid gen AI rise, Indian iOS app developers thriving well, gaining global recognition

With the advent of generative Artificial Intelligence, there is a sense of uncertainty among software professionals, as most of the white-collar jobs like coding and testing are being automated.

Industry experts suggest professionals not to panic. No matter what happens, embrace the reality with calmness. Upskill yourself with gen AI tools and become a freelance software professional or open a startup, with a small team, develop applications to solve real-world problems in unique ways possible. With time, there is huge potential to grow big in the fast-evolving AI technology sphere.

Application development, particularly in the Apple App Store ecosystem, is very lucrative compared to other platforms.

In India alone, the Apple App Store facilitated a record $5.31 billion (around Rs 44,447 crore) in billings and sales in 2024. It is likely to rise to a much bigger number in 2025, as we await the report, which is expected to be published in a month or two.

Ahead of World Wide Developers Conference (June 8-12, 2026), DH had the opportunity to interact with talented iOS developers at Apple Developer Centre (formerly Apple App Accelerator) in Bengaluru, who have created innovative applications which are gaining global recognition.

One such app is the Guitar Wiz, which was launched just a year ago. Guess what, it is one of the finalists of the 2026 edition of the annual Apple Design Awards.

Guitar Wiz

Steve Zubin Alfred of JSplash Studios explaining the features of Guitar Wiz at Apple Development Centre, Bengaluru.

It is developed by Bengaluru-based Bijoy Thangaraj, founder and CEO of JSplash Studios.

Be it a beginner or a professional artist who wants to improve your skillset, the Guitar Wiz app offers a comprehensive guide and tutorial on playing guitar.

It comes with a Comprehensive Chord Library, where users can easily search for chords and multiple variations with simple steps.

It also offers detailed theory breakdowns, moods, and genres for each chord.

Bijoy has made good use of Apple Intelligence to “Chord of the Day” feature on his app. This will help the users jog their memory, relearn and retain them in their chord vocabulary.

It also supports Chord Sheet Scanner, which can read handwritten or printed chord sheets using Apple’s visual recognition.

There is a SongMaker feature, which allows users to create custom tracks, chord progressions, rhythm changes, and practice tracks without vocals.

Besides being a feature-rich digital guitar tutor, it has a novel accessibility feature for people with colour blindness.

It comes with high-contrast and monochrome modes to offer differentiation through checkmarks, so people with vision impairment can independently learn guitar more freely. It also boasts of VoiceOver support with step-by-step chord placement instructions.

Whenever faced with an issue and scope for refining the user interface, Bijoy has received valuable feedback from experts at Apple Developer Centre (ADC). We wish him the best for the Apple Design Awards 2026.

Pockity

Nikhil Nigade explaining the Pockity app at Apple Development Centre, Bengaluru.

Another talented solo developer with 16 years of experience, Nikhil Nigade, has developed Pockity, a handy financial tracking app. Nigade was honest enough to admit that he was not good at tracking monthly bills. And, this is an issue with most of the young professionals around the world. On the first day of the month, we are happy to get the salary credit message on the phone, but by the end of the month, most of us, including yours truly, are left scratching our heads, where did all the money go?

In an uncertain time like this, it is very crucial to keep tab on our expenses and it is especially important for newly married couples who are planning to have a kid or already have one, to make savings. Here's where Pokity comes in to play.

We have mobile wallets, which can give us a monthly audit of money spent, but lack categories on where the money was spent the most.

Also, sometimes, we pay in cash or with a credit/debit card, and these don't get tracked on mobile wallets. We can't manually note them down in a book or in an application.

Here's where Pockity comes in play. Its main philosophy is to help users stay financially aware while spending minimal time in the app.

Pockity offers a neat feature, where you can open camera feature on its app and a take snap, with the power of Apple Intelligence and location (provided permission granted by the user), will autofill the details such as bill amount, including the location (like hotel or a shop name) and based on items, the will intuitively categories them as grocery, food, clothes, loans, utlities and movie tickets.

Also, a notable feature is the monthly cap on categories. If you set any limit on food, such as Rs 10,000. Every time you snap a picture of the hotel bill, it will deduct and show the remaining balance for the month. This way, the user will be more conscious of their expenses on buying food in restaurants and instead develop the habit of making and eating food at home.

And, at the end of the month, it offers a nice colourful dashboard with categories and helps you clearly understand what has pinched your pocket the most. And, with such details, users can plan and cut down unwanted expenses and save for the future.

Nigade noted that the inputs from the experts at Apple Development Centre helped refine the user interface with the dashboard, and make it simpler for users to understand the monthly expenses.

Also, it supports CSV export for financial year reporting, useful for compiling income tax returns and CA requirements.

And, he is planning to make UI fully blend with the Liquid Glass effects of iOS/iPadOS 26 and other Apple devices, and make it more visually appealing for customers.

The app is a freemium; most of the basic features are free to use, but for access to premium features, there is a one-time payment for individual and family plans.

Peak

Harshil Shah showcasing his app Peak at Apple Development Centre, Bengaluru.

Mumbai-based Harshil Shah is another solo developer who has created a feature-rich fitness app called Peak. Shah has worked in several firms, including Riff and Stopwatch, and has also been a prominent contributor to the Food Norms app, which helps people track food intake and nutrition.

But Peak is closer to his heart, as Shah has put a lot of time and all his expertise into developing a fully personalised fitness application. During the COVID-19-induced lockdown in the 2020-21 period, everyone was forced to stay locked at home for several months. Most of us have developed a sedentary lifestyle, leading to health issues such as cardiovascular problems and early onset of diabetes. But Shah, despite the challenges, focuses on developing an app that ensures the user stays motivated and does workouts right inside the home.

For instance, Apple Watch has a native activity ring, which records exercises, walking, and standing. It ensures every user meets the daily target, and at the end of each week and the month, it offers digital badges to keep the users motivated throughout the year. But, Shah noticed, there was a gap between recording the efforts put in the physical activities and the points gained. For instance, if the user plays football for two hours and has sore limbs the next day, he/she has no choice but to skip the activity for the day. So, this gets marked as a sedentary day. With irregular activities, there is no way to meet daily goals, and when the time comes to check the weight at the end of the month, there is hardly any actual progress. And, if it is the end of January, it is even more demotivating for people who were planning to keep their resolution till the end of the year. Here's where Peak comes into play.

Peak, which is developed with Apple's Swift UI, is integrated with HealthKit, a framework used for the iPhone's Health app. With the user's permission, the app gets access to the user's health data.

With the Peak app, users can customise their goals and offers chart to track progress weekly, monthly or yearly. Also, to make the more appealing, the UI is minimalistic in design, colourful and vibrant. It has 80-plus themes, which can be synced on iPhone, iPad, and the Watch.

It has benchmarks, and users can try to break and set new targets for the next month. This way, users can self-motivate to get better each passing day, and by the end of the year, he/she will have progressed far more than they initially set the target.

For Shah, coding is his strongest suit, so for designing the app, he sought help from experts at ADC. They were more than happy to assist him in creating a visually appealing UI to make an enriching experience for the customers.

Peak is doing good international markets, including the US, Europe, in particular Germany and Spain. So, it is available in three languages-- English, German and Spanish. In India, too, it is steadily growing.

Letter Flow

Arima Jain and Aman Jain showcasing their app Letter Flow at Apple Development Centre, Bengaluru.

Developed a very talented duo of cousins--Arima Jain and Aman Jain, Letter Flow is a fun word puzzle for kids and adults.

Aman Jain is a self-taught iOS developer and an Apple WWDC scholar since 2016. And, Arima is one of 50 distinguished winners of the Apple Swift Student Challenge of 2022.

Arima Jain, currently in her second year of her bachelor's degree, began her creative journey during the lockdown. Initially interested in doodling and trying new artistic avenues, she ventured into carpet and then chocolate designing, eventually creating her first NFT collection called Moon Pandas, which successfully sold a few pieces.

Her interest in app development started when a fellow WWDC scholar introduced her to the Swift Student Challenge, which inspired her to create a simple game called Crack the Code, earning her a win (though the conference was online due to COVID). This experience led her to explore app development seriously as a career.

Letter Flow is made using Apple's SwiftUI and beautifully blends with the Liquid Glass user interface of iOS/iPadOS 26. The game features GlassEffectContainer to create beautiful morphing glass surfaces and make it a very engaging and fun activity. Kids will find it very appealing and, in the process, learn new words every day.

The app also uses on-device Apple Intelligence for offline gameplay and dynamic word generation. Also, supports more than 20 languages via Apple’s Translation API.

It offers four modes: Classic, Riddle, Fun, and AI-generated levels. Also, it has accessibility-friendly options, like dyslexia-friendly fonts and adjustable difficulty settings.

It's been only six months since the debut, and Letter Flow is gaining good traction around the world, including in India. It has more than 10,000 and counting. Going by the reviews, it's going to grow big on par with Wordle sooner or later.

The dynamic duo of Arima and Aman have another nice app, Lil Artist. It is a fun learning app for kids aged 2-7. It is also very popular on the Apple App Store.

Zoho Notebook

Mohideen Sheik Sulaiman and Ashok Ramamoorthy explaining the Zoho Notebook app at Apple Development Centre, Bengaluru.

Launched way back in 2015, Notebook has more than eight million downloads worldwide and like Arattai, it is now growing big in India.

Zoho Notebook offers people the ability to keep text notes, checklists, audio, sketches, and photos in a visually organised digital journal.

Zoho has a big team of 500-plus Apple device-centric developers, who regularly meet experts at ADC to work on apps and improve the existing ones.

Here, Mohideen Sheikh Sulaiman and Ashok Ramamoorthy work as liaisons between Zoho and Apple to improve the user experience on the apps.

It boasts of Note Cards for each type of content, such as text, audio, files, photos, and sketches, so users can access them faster.

It is a feature scanner, which is capable of extracting texts from a document. It can not only auto-transcribe a voice recording, but also do mind mapping of topics. This way, users can go directly to the particular topic of the discussion in less time. This is such a time saver for employees to recollect a particular point in an office meeting.

Also, with a summary, one can get the gist of the meetings in a few seconds and file the report to be shared with colleagues who missed the meeting.

The Notebook also supports Apple Pencil and the cross-device Sync feature, which ensures all the notes can be viewed and edited on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and other devices through Zoho Cloud.

When asked what new feature to expect in the Notebook app. Sulaiman said he and his team are working on an Apple Intelligence-powered feature where it can turn any long-form notes or PDFs into an audio podcast format.

Like other freemium apps, Zoho Notebook offers several core features as free-to-use, but for premium features, users have to subscribe with annual/monthly fees.

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