Last week, Ideaworks Labs announced a new licensing model for its cross-platform mobile development environment Airplay.

The headline was any small company - turnover of less than $50,000 - could get the technology for free if they were just developing for iPhone.

The cost of added cross-platform features to get a game onto Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile and BREW devices is $99 per seat per year.

So, what's the reaction been?

"It's slightly knocked us for six, but in a good way. Certainly we didn't expect to hit 1,000 new users within the first week," says Tim Closs, Ideaworks Labs CTO.

"We've had questions pouring in about when we're adding our Mac SDK, when we're adding Maemo support... It's clear there's a huge pent-up demand for a solution like Airplay SDK, which is hugely exciting for us."

"Now that we've launched our public forums, we're really starting to engage with developers to help them in making all kinds of apps for the 300+ different devices Airplay currently targets. I can't wait to see the first wave of Airplay apps making their way to the App Store, Android Market and Ovi Store."

Developers can register and download a full free evaluation of Airplay SDK 4.0 by visiting airplaysdk.com.