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CTIA Theme: Getting A Big Idea To Fit In Small Phones
September 18, 2006
By John Letzing
Big media companies, from CBS Broadcasting Inc. to MTV Networks, made it plain during the CTIA Wireless conference last week that mobile phones need to be ready soon for prime time as a content platform.
But getting the small, complicated devices to that stage is still very much a work in progress. Smelling opportunity, a number of young companies present at the show are hoping to make their mark by zeroing in on the gap between expectation and reality.
A good example is voice-activated search developer Promptu Corp., which could, for example, make MTV content related to specific entertainers accessible by voice command.
Menlo Park, Calif.-based Promptu raised an $11.6 million round of funding earlier this month from investors Steelpoint Capital Partners and Lauder Partners LLC, bringing its total to $69 million. Promptu Senior Vice President Brady Bruce said during CTIA that he'd been getting calls from interested VCs, indicating that another round is possible, though no deals have been sealed.
Bruce was roaming the CTIA floor with a Promptu-enabled phone, offering people the chance to ask it for specific content. Even with significant background noise in the convention center lobby, the technology made quick work of digging up the latest Tiger Woods ephemera at the sound of his name, from wallpaper to ringtones.
The logic is simple, and appealing -- if users can be spared the numerous clicks through a tiny screen required now to get to Tiger, they're likely to download and buy a lot more content related to him.
Another young company, SNAPin Software Inc., is covering a more mundane, but essential aspect of prompting people to use their phones to obtain and transmit content: customer service.
Bellevue, Wash.-based SNAPin develops technology that resides within a phone and offers users instructions on how to use it both to their own and carriers' advantage. For example, the technology can detect if a user has been taking photos with the phone's camera, but not transmitting them over a network via multimedia messaging.
SNAP in Chief Executive Robert Lewis said that a carrier could then use the technology to send a note to that user, pointing out that sending messages is an option, and even perhaps offering a free batch of promotional messages to get the user started.
SNAPin was founded in 2003, and is backed by roughly $18 million in funding from investors including Trilogy Equity Partners and Oak Investment Partners. The company now has various undisclosed carriers in Europe testing its technology, including a pilot program with Orange SA in the U.K.
A more peculiar form of young company making content more suitable for mobile is mTLD Top Level Domain Ltd., which operates as dotMobi. The organization is funded by 13 strategic investors including Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Vodafone Group PLC, and has established standards to help companies get their simplified content on mobile phones using the .mobi domain.
DotMobi, launched roughly one year ago, enables content providers to produce pared-down Web sites, which are brief, sparse and much more suitable for mobile phones than a .com site designed for a PC screen. Companies now using the new domain for their customized mobile presence include carmaker Rolls-Royce PLC.
DotMobi Vice President of Carrier Relations Simon Pollack said that roughly 12,000 .mobi domain names have been registered by trademarked brands so far, and he expects that number to grow rapidly after September 26, when general registration for non-trademarked brands begins.
Media & PR contact:
Alani Kalfayan
Communique PR
+1 206.282.4923 ext.118
Alani@communiquepr.com
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