“Some people have referred to us as an ‘accelerator,’ but I don’t necessarily see us that way,” said Andrej Kostresevic, the founder of New Frontier Nomads. He intends to lead his 14-employee company to the new frontiers in information technology, and “currently, that frontier is mobile. We now have a computer in our pocket that’s always connected to the Internet. The next new frontier might be wearable computers. It might be smart TVs.”

Started almost two years ago, New Frontier Nomads usually takes 5 percent to 15 percent of a company’s stock in exchange for its technical development services. “We become the tech startup team,” said Kostresevic, a veteran software developer. “We have a process that takes you from an idea to a finished and successful product. We focus on idea validation and product development.” He said New Frontier last year launched 10 software-based products for development-stage companies.

Rokk3r Labs is another facilitator of software business development that has been in operation since March 2012. Its bustling home office in Miami Beach has about 45 employees who build mobile phone applications and other types of software products for more than two dozen portfolio companies, including LearnerNation, an online locator of entrepreneurial activity and opportunity called MapYourStartup and an online employee recruitment site called Crowdbounty, which pays viewers for personnel recommendations that lead to hires. Rokk3r Labs also has worked on tech-heavy ventures with investors that are well established corporations, including McDonald’s and State Farm. “We try to focus on social, mobile and digital products that will change how people interact," said Nabyl Charania, 37, a managing director of Rokk3r Labs. "It’s not an easy thing. For every Facebook, there’s 1,000 startups that fail in two months."

Rokk3r owns 3 percent to 45 percent of most companies in its portfolio and 100 percent of some. “A lot of the companies in our portfolio come from accelerators and incubators. We’re the logical next graduation step,” Charania said. His company serves high-tech entrepreneurs in more than the purely advisory capacity of accelerators and incubators by actually building software and business models for them in exchange for a combination of cash and equity in their companies.

“Our model is cash and equity, so entrepreneurs pay enough cash to fuel the development, then we invest whatever they can’t pay in cash as part owners of their company,” Charania said. “We price it at $20,000 a week, and that gives you about four or five full-time resources,” including management consultants, software designers and program developers.

Most Rokk3r projects cost $100,000 to $300,000 to complete. “We do it very, very fast. We develop them in four months or less,” said German Montoya, 41, a managing director of the Miami Beach company. “A four-month project is a huge project for us. When you finish that product, you are ready to run your business.”

In addition to newly minted companies, the app economy also encompasses such well established, software-based companies as Citrix Systems in Fort Lauderdale and Ultimate Software Group in Weston, both publicly traded. Others based outside the state have facilities in South Florida, including Research in Motion, the Canadian maker of Blackberry wireless handsets.

Research in Motion, Foxconn Technology Group, the Motorola Mobility unit of Google and other app-intensive businesses “all have R&D facilities here in South Florida, which means engineers with not only the capability to write the apps but to build the hardware,” said Steve Luis, director of technology at Florida International University’s computer science school. “South Florida obviously participates in a broader app economy through the U.S. and globally. So, we have a great deal of talent and a broad spectrum of talent.”

FIU is adding to the talent pool by graduating about 250 students each year with degrees in computer science. “We’re definitely seeing an uptick in the interest in the industry to hire our students,” Luis said. “Starting computer scientists could make anything starting in the upper $70,000s. It’s one of the highest paid professions coming out of college.”

A do-it-yourself trend could help reshape the development of software for mobile phones and other handheld devices. For example, customers of a Deerfield Beach company called AppsBar build their own mobile apps. Founded in 2011, AppsBar helps customers make apps compatible with Apple’s iOS operating system and Google’s Android operating system and says it has more than 400,000 users.

Miguel Alonso, college-wide chairperson of engineering at Miami Dade College, said a free software tool called MIT App Inventor allows almost anyone to create a mobile app for an Android phone. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology maintains the tool online and search engine operator Google created it. “They allow you to build apps just by kind of piecing it together graphically,” Alonso said.

The surge in app publishing has encouraged MDC to make mobility a major in its computer science curricula. Miami-Dade College last year began offering a two-year degree program with an emphasis on mobile app development, Alonso said. “Essentially we developed that program based on the trend in the industry,” Alonso said. “Even the lay person sees the growth in this industry, so it’s kind of a no-brainer for us to focus on the mobile space as one of our initiatives.”