Some of the biggest app blockbusters on your smartphone or tablet came from mobile app developers.
Take Instagram, for example. The company only had a dozen or so employees when Facebook bought it for a cool $1 billion.
So who are the people working on the next big hit? We took a look at some of the best independent developers doing the coolest things in mobile.
Daniel Mendes de Oliveira of Box Fish wants to change how you interact with TV
Daniel Mendes de Oliveira works at Boxfish, a new company that is challenging how we interact with our cable boxes.
Boxfish believes there is a huge navigation and discovery problem with TV and the Boxfish app allows users to engage with the content on TV as it happens.
At Boxfish, Oliveria is head of Front End Development. Previously, Oliveria was the founder of the Brazilian company DooIT, which was acquired by Boxfish in mid-2011.
Boxfish says Oliveria is, "a true ninja of front end development." He is now based in Palo Alto, just a few blocks away from Boxfish's HQ.
Boxfish is free and available for iPhone and iPod touch.
Olli Wang turns real-world discovery into a game
Olli Wang is the developer of the innovative app, Fog of World. Together with designer Sheri Huang, he runs Ollix, a creative and active software development company in Taiwan.
Fog of World turns walking around into a game. The app challenges you to uncover a world map simply by exploring your surroundings. As you move through an area, fog lifts from the map on your mobile device. It's a great way to remember all the places you've been.
Wang says his dream is to travel around the world and be a great photographer, and he created the app to help him do that.
The app's name comes from the video game term "fog of war," where unexplored territory is grayed out. The more you explore, the more you clear away the fog.
Fog of World is available for iPhone for $4.99.
Marco Arment redefined how we read articles online
Marco Arment is the developer of Instapaper, the app that lets you save online articles and read them later on your smartphone or tablet.
Arment developed Instapaper by himself and launched the app in January 2008. It has since become a staple on mobile devices.
Recently, Arment launched an iOS app called The Magazine, which is a monthly publication about technology.
If Arment's venture into digital publishing pays off like his Instapaper success, this indie developer may be on the verge of disrupting another industry.
Instapaper is available for the iPhone and iPad for $3.99. You can download it for Android devices for $2.99.
The Magazine is a free download in Apple's App Store. Subscriptions are $1.99 per month with a free 7-day trial.
Paul Haddad of Tapbots made the best Twitter app, ever
Paul Haddad of Tapbots is co-creator and developer of the popular alternative Twitter app called Tweetbot. Tweetbot is widely regarded as the best mobile Twitter experience and its design and gestures have set an example for many other apps.
Tweetbot is a robust Twitter client, which gives users a beautiful interface, creative sounds, animation, and features like multiple timelines and smart gestures.
Tweetbot is available for iPhone for $2.99 and Mac for $19.99.
Adi Ashkenazi of Flayvr created a gorgeous way to manage your iPhone's photos and videos
Adi lives and breathes technology.
Today, Adi is the CTO and lead developer for the innovative photo app Flayvr. Flayvr helps users to easily sort through their photo albums to remember experiences.
Flayvr helps give users control back over their iPhone photo albums. Instead of having to scroll through a huge photo album of individual shots, Flavyr turns your camera roll into different albums based on events.
Adi has more than nine years of experience in software development, project management, and team leadership.
Before Flayvr, Adi was a team leader at Fring, a communication app, and a senior software engineer at Modu.
Flavyr is a free download in Apple's App store.
Wes Wong, MoviePass
Wes Wong is MoviePass' Product Manager where he acts as User Experience, Information Architect, Mobile Designer and Front-end Developer. He's surrounded by a team of equally passioned movie lovers, working hard to bring that moviegoer nostalgia back to the masses.
MoviePass is like Netflix except for theaters. Members pay a monthly fee ranging from $29-35 and can see one movie per day.
In the past year, Wes has worked tirelessly to find a solution for MoviePass members to watch all the new movies at their favorite theaters. He's played a key role in conceptualizing the new mobile app, which is tied to MoviePass' proprietary technology and re-loadable debit card and has led the app development through the product launch.
Udi Cohen and the team behind Any.Do, a great app that keeps you organized
Udi Cohen is leading Android development at Any.DO.
Any.DO is a creative mobile and web app that helps you stay on top of tasks and get organized. You can enter a task on your iPhone and it will show up in your browser and anywhere else you choose.
Cohen taught himself programming at the age of 13 and has written several applications to solve some of his everyday problems. (There's actually a really good post about it on his blog). Choen loves mobile development because he loves the challenge of developing for small screens and low-memory devices. He always go the extra mile to bring a high quality product.
Any.DO is free and available for iOS, Android, Google Chrome, and the web.
Loren Brichter created the original official Twitter app. Now he has a hot new game called Letterpress
Loren Brichter designed and developed the popular Twitter client, Tweetie for Mac and iPhone. The app was so good it was acquired by Twitter and became the official app.
Brichter left Twitter and recently released a popular new mobile game called Letterpress.
Letterpress is a word scramble game that lets you play against friends over the web using the iPhone's Game Center.
We can expect much more from Brichter in the future. In an interview with The Next Web , Brichter said once he left Twitter he "jumped right into a backlog of ideas" that he didn't have time to work on before. Most of them will likely never see the light of day, but some of them, like Letterpress, and some of the core tech behind it – might surface slowly.
Letterpress is free for iPhone and iPad. You can also unlock the full version that lets you play as many games as you want at once for $0.99.
Joakim Fernstad of Deloitte Digital helped make Apple's Passbook app a reality
Joakim Fernstad is a senior software engineer at Deloitte digital. Most recently, Fernstad worked on one of the first apps compatible with Apple's Passbook digital wallet app. His work was showcased at WWDC 2012 and is something that everyone has on their iPhones.
Fernstad previously worked on implementing a feature to help Apple Store customers locate products inside the store easily on a map.
Previously he developed apps for Übermind, Inc and several other companies.
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