A number of companies in Estonia are developing services for the über-popular gadgets iPhone and iPad. Head and shoulders above the rest is former Skype employee Mikael Suvi (pictured with his wife), whose company CandyCane earned 140,000 euros of net profit in 2009 and has enjoyed good sales in 2010 as well.

Suvi, who currently lives and works in Portugal, considers developing games his hobby. “I do what I like to do,” he says. He is currently in the employ of the British firm Miniclip, which also makes games.

Suvi’s company CandyCane has introduced three hits– puzzle games called Fling!; Fuzzle and Fragger, the last one reminiscent of Angry Birds. All have been near the top of the AppStore rankings for weeks and in different countries. Hundreds of thousands have bought Fling and Fuzzle (besides the millions of free copies out there), while Fragger sales recently hit the million mark.

Two men from Skype

CandyCane is listed in the Estonian Commercial Register as being owned by Suvi, but he says that a whole slew of former and current Skype personnel are behind the success. One of the core developers of Fling and Fuzzle is a New Zealander who had a employment stint in Tallinn – Michael Bevin, whom the media in his native country has called a CandyCane co-owner  - while Suvi has worked more on Fragger.

“Suvi is a sharp guy,” says former co-worker Kalju Rüütli. “He’s enterprising, which is rare among programmers, as they usually want to write elegant code and they are not interested in ‘where the money is.’”

The new market created by Apple where every developer can sell the game or other software program they have developed has experienced very rapid growth. Today there are over 300,000 apps and Apple sells around 250,000 new iPhones, iPads and iPods every day.