Little-Known Apple (AAPL) Subsidiary Set to Gain From Coronavirus

In recent years, watching Apple NASDAQ: AAPL  acquire company after company has been something of a pastime for the tech field. Between that and watching what comes out of the Apple patent mill, it's been a great way to get a better idea of where the company's going and what it might be planning to do. One such move has the potential to pay off in a big way, even as Apple's primary revenue streams start to buckle. It's a little-known subsidiary operation that has the potential to step up in a big way for the company: Claris.

Claris? It Sounds Like an Allergy Medication.

Claris' name alone probably doesn't ring a lot of bells to anyone outside of a handful of tech specialists. It's a company that makes a piece of development software called FileMaker, a tool that focuses on “low-code application” development.

For those not familiar, low-code application development is pretty much what the name implies: an approach to application development that doesn't require a lot of code to develop. Instead, users get access to a drag-and-drop graphics-heavy interface that lets people assemble apps almost like a building-block model kit. Snap one piece into place here, another into place there, and within a couple days or so of snapping together, you get a completed app.

This represents a lot of gain over traditional app development. The average iPhone app, for example, has just under 50,000 lines of code to it. By way of comparison, a million lines of code requires about 18,000 pages of printed text to present, so 50,000 lines of code would take about 900 to present. That's roughly the same thing as writing Stephen King's “The Stand”, except you don't have to be near so concerned about who's going to Las Vegas instead of Boulder.

Why Low-Code Development Could be Huge in the Coronavirus Era

Okay, so that's a lot of time savings involved, but what good does that do for anybody outside of app developers? The answer—and the thing that could make Claris a huge deal in the coronavirus era—is that it doesn't just take less time to build apps, it also democratizes the process and makes it a lot simpler for pretty much anyone to make an app.

This means that app development becomes that much more available to places that don't exactly have a lot of background in the field. Places like government organizations, education operations, healthcare firms, and nonprofit groups. These places have a lot of talent in certain areas, but typically, “app development” isn't on the list. Even for places that have IT operations and support, that typically focuses more on app use than app creation.

Already Claris' impact on this front has been realized: Claris was recently spotted working with a European hospital to take just one day and create an app that produced a way to make decisions about COVID-19 patients. Before this app was developed, the hospital was using a decision tree drawn on paper, a process that took a lot more time, and paper, to go through. Right now, Claris runs wholly on Amazon Web Services (AWS), but there's word that says it's looking into partnerships with Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure as well.

The Future Beyond Coronavirus

Basically, this is a great opportunity for Claris to become a huge new part of the Apple juggernaut. While iPhone sales are stagnant right now, there's likely to be plenty of demand for a way to build apps that don't require a lot of heavy lifting and code monkey-work to put together. Being able to sell and work on that front will help ensure Apple has another revenue stream to work with.

Better yet, Claris will prove itself in some of the worst conditions ever seen: the coronavirus pandemic. If it can continue to provide value at that level, then it can provide value when things return to normal, or at least an approximation of it. By way of comparison, a safe that can survive being bathed in molten steel can certainly survive the temperatures produced in a standard house fire, so testing for unusually stressful conditions makes the product that much more attractive under typical-stress environments.

Claris may prove to be one of the biggest winners Apple has on hand, and all from a platform almost no one knew about even just a month ago.