IPhone apps: A launch point for a new wave of tech giants?

There are hordes of people writing tens of thousands of apps that transform the iPhone into things as varied as a pinball machine and a flashlight. Some apps become moneymakers. Others go virtually unnoticed and disappear into the backroom of Apple's App Store, never to be downloaded again. But some Silicon Valley venture capitalists and start-ups see the iPhone as more than a cash machine -- to them, it's the platform on which to build the next generation of big tech companies. "I absolutely think there will be large public companies built around this ecosystem," said Matt Murphy, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm that has been an early investor in some of the tech industry's biggest success stories, including Amazon.com Inc., Google Inc. and Netscape Communications. Murphy runs Kleiner Perkins' $100-million iFund, which was created in collaboration with Apple to invest in start-ups developing apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Two recent deals signaled the payday potential of the mobile app market. Google acquired mobile advertising company AdMob Inc. for $750 million in stock. And video game publisher Electronic Arts Inc. bought Playfish Inc. -- a start-up that made games for social networks like Facebook as well as for the iPhone -- in a deal valued at up to $400 million. Although AdMob and Playfish did not focus solely on iPhone apps, their acquisition reflected a maturing mobile market, Murphy said.