Smaato CEO Ragnar Kruse was selected to join the new Steering Commitee for the dotMobi Advisory Group (MAG).

“I think the work of the dotMobi MAG is very valuable in driving a wider adoption of the mobile web. I am honored to join the Steering Commitee and help move the open mobile economy forward, especially the mobile advertising initiatives” stated Ragnar Kruse, CEO.

Membership grows to over 100 members; New Steering Committee draws active participation from leading global organizations in the mobile web arena

Dublin, Ireland (PRWEB) February 4, 2008 — The dotMobi Advisory Group (MAG) today announced the results of recent elections for seats to the MAG Steering Committee. The new MAG Steering Committee consists of key industry executives nominated and elected from the following thirteen (13) global MAG member companies: Akmin Technologies, Boomcast Entertainment Corporation, Carlson Marketing Worldwide, GoDaddy, iLoop Mobile, Millennial Media, Mobility.mobi, Nokia, QuickPlay Media, SinglePoint, Smaato, Sony and The Weather Channel. The MAG membership charter calls for a maximum of thirteen (13) MAG Steering Committee members.

“2007 has been a busy and highly productive year for the MAG which has seen its membership increase from less than 20 in the early part of the year to over 100 active members at this point in time,” noted Michael J. O’Farrell, Chair and Executive Director of the dotMobi Advisory Group. “The distinguished line up of companies recently elected to the MAG Steering Committee is a strong vote of confidence in the MAG, the .mobi domain, the dotMobi company and the mobile web objectives that we have set forth.”

Download the full press release as an Adobe PDF document.

San Mateo, California - January 18, 2008 – Smaato, a pioneering provider of mobile advertising platform technology announced that it has closed a $ 3.5 million financing round. Smaato was successful in attracting prominent smart angel investors from international media, advertising, mobile and the financial community. Silicon Valley based legal firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati advised on the funding and participated with an investment.

“We are convinced Smaato is at the fore front of this new marketing opportunity. Mobile advertising will be in hyper growth mode for the coming years and we believe Smaato is one of the leading pioneers in this field with an experienced management team and an excellent track record in the recent past. We will be actively supporting Smaato to position the company as a leader in the mobile advertising space,” stated Uwe R. Feuersenger, CEO of aeris CAPITAL who also participated in this financing round.

Download full press release as PDF file: Press Release: Series A Funding

Picked up by:

Red Herring: “Google of Mobile: Smaato Dials in $ 3.5 M

Advertising Delivery Support for Java Phones, Smartphones & Mobile Web;
Launch of New Version of SOMA Mobile Advertising Platform
CTIA – San Francisco Moscone Center, Booth # 108, October 23 – 25, 2007

CTIA/San Francisco/San Mateo, October 22, 2007 – Smaato Inc., pioneering developer of ad-enabling technology for mobile phones, will be presenting three major new feature extensions and new mobile advertising concepts for the Smaato Open Mobile Advertising platform (SOMA™) at this year’s CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment convention.

– SOMA™ Enabled Carrier Solutions: Smaato Ad Call Display™
– In-Application Mobile Advertising for Java – including Facebook
– SOMA™ 2.1 Featuring Mobile Advertising for Mobile Internet

Read Full Release PDF

 Smartphone Summit Presents ‘Smartphone Enterprise Solutions 2007′ San Francisco  - An exclusive conference event beginning October 22, 2007 with CTIA WIRELESS I.T. & Entertainment, dedicated to bringing you the top Smartphone based Enterprise Solutions from all Smartphone O/S platforms including Symbian, Microsoft, Palm, Linux, and beyond. The focused attendee demographic includes enterprise executives as well as wireless developers and I.T. professionals. 

Harald Neidhardt, CMO & Co-Founder of Smaato Inc. has been selected to present the SOMA Mobile Ad-Server platform together with industry peers at this leading conference. The Session Details:

Mobile Commerce - Payment & Marketing Solutions for Smartphone Devices

The smartphone platform lends itself to sophisticated on the go applications including the ability to shop for goods and services, along with processing mobile payments of any type, and displaying dynamic cutting edge mobile advertising. Join experts in these fields to explore commerce solutions that can help you engage in the next level of global commerce - wireless.

· Handmark - Douglas Edwards - Co-founder and CMO

· Smaato Inc. - Harald Neidhardt - CMO, Co-Founder

· Neo Media Technologies - William J. Hoffman - CEO

“Smaato Cost” for PocketPC has been nominated for a 2007 Best Software Award in the category “Communication, Phone Info Access - WM” by the Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine staff and its Board of Experts!

 Smaato Cost has been nominated in Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine’s Seventh Annual Best Software Awards for Windows Mobile software. Throughout August a team of 100 Windows Mobile experts from around the world will evaluate the software nominees in 151 Pocket PC categories and 40 Smartphone categories.

Nominations Manager, Werner Ruotsalainen, and the 2007 Board of Experts have nominated the top software from Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine’s exhaustive 4888 product Encyclopedia of Software and Accessories. Finalists will be announced in late September and winners in October at the Awards Home Page at www.pocketpcmag.com/awards/.  Complete details about the winners will be included in the 2007 Buyer’s Guide, available in December, mailed free to Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine subscribers. The list of nominees, the procedure for judging, a link to the Encyclopedia, and the qualifications of the Board of Experts can all be found at the Best Software Awards home page.

Smaato Cost can be downloaded for Windows Mobile and Palm OS mobile devices at: http://www.smaato.com/cost.php

Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine featured two SOMA enabled applications today in its weekly newsletter. iambic’s TopStory and Smaato Cost are presented and readers are provided info to download and invited to comment. Both smartphone apps for Windows Mobile are free to downlad, because they are ad-enabled by SOMA - the Smaato Open Mobile Advertising platform.

 Milwaukee, WI July 19, 2007 - Developer ONE today released their new RSS news reader product “News Mix” and announced their support for SOMA - the Smaato mobile ad serving platform.

Developer One is a leading Windows Mobile software developer with several award winning applications, including lead product AgendaOne. In 2005 Developer One has been named developer of the year by Handango.com.

NewsMix has been released today and can be downloaded for free at the Developer One website at: www.developerone.com. It comes with several pre-configured news channels and can be easily customized with personal news feeds. Versions of NewsMix are available fr Windows Mobile 4 (Pocket PC and Smartphone Edition) as well as Windows Mobile 6 devices.

 This just in: Palm Inc. announced today in its international software newsletter that Smaato Cost has been selected Product of the month for the Windows mobile version. The newsletter is targeted towards registered Palm users and software developers interested in news, trends and cool applications.

Smaato Cost is featured here in the solutions directory on the Palm website and is available for free download at www.smaato.com. Smaato is a registered partner of the “Designed for Palm Products” program.

 Red Herring (www.redherring.com) published a cover story about mobile advertising in its digital edition today. UK-based editor Peter Purton gives a great overview about the players and the current trends in mobile advertsing globally:

“Mobile advertising and marketing using the cell phone to sell is quietly turning into a global phenomenon. While web advertising has been getting all the attention, mobile advertising has grown up in the background, attracting the attention of tens of millions of people. […]

The prospect of getting this unprecedented level of access to cash-wielding consumers has lots of companies excited from global automotive brands like Toyota, BMW, Ford, and Peugeot, to consumer players like Coca-Cola, Proctor & Gamble, and Johnson & Johnson, to media groups like Warner Brothers, not to mention companies from the telecommunications, computing, and Internet worlds.”

Peter goes on and features several leaders in mobile advertsing, including Advertising.com’s newly acquired Third Screen Media, Screentonic, other players like Vodafone as well as Smaato.
“… San Mateo, California-based mobile advertising platform maker Smaato helps produce advertising revenue for off-deck services by allowing developers of mobile services to integrate ads with their content. Harald Neidhardt, Smaato’s chief marketing officer, agrees that carriers have a substantial advantage. But they won’t always, he says.

The carrier deck may be prime real estate, he adds, but you can’t put everything on the carrier deck. Mr. Neidhardt compares the situation to the days when AOL and Prodigy had all the content. They wanted to keep people within their walls but what the web people wanted to use was a thousand times bigger. And that is where they ended up going.

The lesson of that era leaves no doubt in his mind about where things are headed: “the off-deck market will explode”, he says. …

 Smaato is proud to announce that it has joined the dot.mobi advisory group chaired by Michael O’ Farrell and is active in the mobile advertising task force led by Eric Eller.

The Mobile Advertising Task Force is currently collaborating on a white paper that will address some of the frequently asked questions of mobile advertising and together are working to form the MAG perspective on the subject. This paper will look at identifying the product, policy and commercialization opportunities that mobile advertising has for the market using the .mobi domain.

Smaato CMO Harald Neidhardt has been selected as one of the co-editors for the white paper supporting Eric Eller (Millennial Media, USA) in his publishing task.

“Smaato welcomes the .mobi domain initiative and is proud to be an active member of the .mobi advisory group. We have identified that truly mobile landing pages are still a missing link in providing a engaging mobile user experience for brands and marketers.
We promote .mobi domains as a trusted initiative to accelerate the growth of the mobile economy even further. Being at the leading edge of the mobile advertising market - especially for smartphones - we see .mobi progressing on a daily basis,” stated Harald Neidhardt, CMO Smaato Inc.

In addition to its .mobi support and its membership in the US and European MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) and the German BVDW (German digital media association) Smaato is committed to help the mobile advertising community with its support of global advertising standards.

Update July 25, 2007: Harald has been elected Vice Chair of the dot.mobi MAG task force on mobile advertising.