Smaato welcomes the new iPhone 3G

Sometimes innovations from the Valley are brought to life first in other parts of the world. Last Friday, the Smaato team in Hamburg got an 9 hour advantage on having the new iPhone in their hands ahead of the U.S. based Smaato team.

On Friday the 11th at 10 AM in the T-Mobile store - in 300 feet distance from the Smaato office in Hamburg - there were exactly 3 people ahead of us buying the new shiny smartphone from Apple. We got the 16G black edition and started to bring it to life with our CMO’s T-Mobile contract to get the whole “legal” experience – after playing a year with “opened” iPhones from the U.S.

Smaato is especially keen on getting the iPhone user experience first hand, as we announced earlier our beta program for developers of our iSOMA SDK for Apple iPhone developers. Today we like to re-invite Developers to start working with iSOMA.

The launch of the new iPhone AppStore was a great success as Fierce Wireless reported today:

“[Apple] … announced more than a million devices sold within the first three days of release, with iPhone and iPod users also downloading more than 10 million applications from the fledgling App Store, which debuted Thursday. According to Apple, there are now more than 800 native iPhone applications available via the App Store, with 200 of them offered free of charge.”

Mobile Analyst Dr. J. Gerry Purdy of Frost & Sullivan was all the rave about the new opportunities for mobile developers in his column last week. Gerry states: “I believe that custom applications yield the best user experience in mobile. … The advantages of custom applications include a better user interface, access to remote data, a ‘mash up’ of data from multiple sources, which is almost impossible to do with Web applications for mobile.” Read the rest of this entry »

London / San Mateo, July 7, 2008 – Smaato Inc., a pioneering provider for in-application mobile advertising solutions, and Blue Whale Systems Ltd today announced a new strategic partnership. Blue Whale Systems introduces the free ad-supported BlueWhaleMail application that offers a mobile push e-mail and push Facebook service.

With its BlueWhaleMail application, Blue Whale Systems offers a service to make simple and effective e-mail and Facebook access available to the 2.7 billion people using mass market mobile phones. Many of these phones have either an unusable or hard to configure built in e-mail service; BlueWhaleMail allows users to keep the phone they like and still get a great service for mobile e-mail and Facebook. In connecting BlueWhaleMail to the SOMA™ (Smaato Open Mobile Advertising) platform, Smaato enables Blue Whale Systems’ business model by allowing them to offer their service to users for free; financing this by ad-enabling the application.

“The partnership with Smaato is a great step forward for us. In ad-enabling our application and offering it free of charge to our users we can enhance our reach and build a greater community”, said Richard Seward, Founder & CEO of Blue Whale Systems. “We believe that banner adverts at the top of the BlueWhaleMail message viewer provide an unobtrusive way to support the service”.

“We are excited to partner with Blue Whale Systems and their innovative mobile e-mail solution”, comments Ragnar Kruse, Co-Founder & CEO of Smaato Inc. “Access to e-mail on mobile phones is getting more and more mission critical for businesses or a vital part of our connected lives in the mobile age. Together with Blue Whale Systems we enhance our reach in Europe for our ad sales network partners.”

The MMA Forum in New York was a great success for us.

Harald Neidhardt, CMO & Co-Founder of Smaato spoke about “Downloadables - An emerging mobile ad inventory for brands”. The slides can be found here: http://www.slideshare.net/hneidhardt/harald-neidhardt-smaato-mma-forum-2008-06-10/.

Mobile Marketer reported about us in their daily newsletter: http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/associations/1141.html

Integrated Ad Platforms Extend Reach for Advertisers Across Mobile and on iPhone MOBILE MARKETING FORUM

NEW YORK, NY, – June 9, 2008 –-Smaato Inc., a pioneering provider for in-application mobile advertising solutions, and Ad Infuse, a leader in delivering highly personalized mobile ad experiences, today announced a new strategic partnership to provide advertisers, publishers, and operators broad in-application advertising solutions.

With the connection between Ad Infuse’s adInMotion™ platform and the SOMA™ (Smaato Open Mobile Advertising) platform, Ad Infuse and Smaato will enhance their reach in the growing “downloadable” mobile advertising business throughout U.S. and in European markets. Earlier this year, both companies announced iPhone advertising solutions, which are enhanced by this new partnership. Ad Infuse’s multi-format iPhone advertising solution will be integrated with Smaato’s iSOMA in-application mobile advertising platform for iPhone SDK developers, providing broader reach for advertisers and new monetization opportunities for content providers and application developers.

“We see great potential in a partnership with Smaato with their SOMA platform. Their in-application advertising focus and expertise help us to enhance our offering and extend our reach beyond the mobile web,” said Brian Cowley, CEO of AdInfuse. “We see demand for this type of inventory from our discussions with partners in the mobile space, such as international operators.”

“Reaching a high fill rate with quality partners and brands is key to our mobile developers and publishers,” said Ragnar Kruse, Co-Founder and CEO of Smaato Inc. ”Ad Infuse is a recognized innovator in mobile advertising and, together, we will work on pushing the adoption of our mobile in-application ad inventory forward.”

Both companies are headquartered in the Silicon Valley, CA, and have expanded their operations to Europe, where AdInfuse has an office in London, UK. Smaato and Ad Infuse are driving the adoption of mobile advertising for mobile applications developers and their rapidly growing mobile inventory through active involvement in mobile industry groups and guideline initiatives, such as the MMA, the dot.mobi mobile advertising taskforce, and educational forums such as Mobile Ad Degree.

Last week Smaato partner Skweezer made the following press announcement:

“IRVINE, Calif., May 19, 2008—Skweezer, Inc. today announced it will begin distributing a new mobile banner advertising feed through partnership with Smaato, Inc.

“Smaato’s open architecture platform allows us to dramatically expand our mobile advertising capabilities,” said Skweezer, Inc. CEO Kevin Perkins. “By combining the breadth of multiple banner ad networks via Smaato, our premium publishers will have more opportunity to monetize their offerings world-wide with their Skweezer Ads feed.”

Skweezer Ads is an online advertising service that provides text-based cost-per-click (CPC) ads to both mobile and desktop environments through a single ad feed. The new partnership with Smaato will allow Skweezer to start offering banner-based cost-per-impression (CPM) ads created specifically for display on mobile platforms. This mobile banner feed is available for international distribution, which supports Skweezer’s presence in over 175 countries.

Initial traffic for the new mobile banner feed will be confined to 200 million requests per month and will be served to Skweezer Ads’ India market. Once the new feed has been thoroughly appraised and validated, it will be distributed throughout Skweezer Ads’ global network of publishers, carriers and ad providers.

SOMA Wrapper allows Java developers to profit from in-application advertising without touching the source code.

 San Francisco, May 5, 2008 — Smaato Inc. is showcasing new additions to its SOMA™ Open Mobile Advertising Platform. SOMA Wrapper, the latest addition to the SOMA mobile advertising solution will be launched during the summer with a European Operator.   SOMA Wrapper is a service which allows adding different ad formats and placements to existing binary Java ME applications (JAR files). These features include: on start-up and on exit, timer based and between levels (e.g. in games). The advertising components are “wrapped” around the JAR file.  The free SOMA SDK is bundled with Enough Software’s market leading J2ME Polish toolkit for mobile Java Developers. J2ME Polish is the de-facto standard for mobile JAVA developers worldwide. The J2ME toolkit by Enough Software has already been downloaded over 600.000 times and has been commercially licensed by Nokia, Motorola, Mozilla and others. The close integration makes it possible to ad-enable J2ME Polish based applications without manually changing the source code. Just enable the advertising option and press “recompile”.

Since March 1, 2008 Marc Junker is Chief Technical Officer (CTO & CIO) at mobile advertising pioneer Smaato.

Marc will be the driving force for the further development of the mobile advertising platform SOMA and building new mobile ad services. Smaato is looking to expand its European based R&D team significantly in the next months.

Marc Junker (37) has over 10 years experience in IT and mobile business. Before joining Smaato, he was Co-Founder and CTO of mobileview, one or Europe’s leading Wireless Application Service Provider (WASP). Mobileview provides mobile services and content for brand owners, media companies, web and WAP portals, carriers, service provicers and content owners in over 17 countries. 

Today Smaato was announced a Andrew Seybold Choice Awards 2008 Finalist in six categories. Smaato has been named finalist as “Best New Company” for SOMA™ - Smaato Open Mobile Advertising Platform.

The Andrew Seybold Choice Award winners will be named April 1, 2008, at the 18th Annual Andrew Seybold Wireless Dinner at CTIA Wireless 2008 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

SOMA Mobile Advertising Platform Opens Up New Revenue Streams For Developers Of J2ME Polish - The De-Facto Standard Toolkit for Mobile Java

San Mateo, CA / Barcelona, Spain, February 7, 2008 — Smaato Inc. and Enough Software have joined forces to bring new revenue streams to mobile developers by embedding advertisements into mobile applications.

Smaato’s mobile advertising solution can be integrated into any mobile application and is now bundled with J2ME Polish – the mobile application development platform for JAVA by Enough Software. J2ME Polish is the de-facto standard for mobile JAVA developers worldwide.

The J2ME toolkit by Enough Software has already been downloaded over 600.000 times and has been licensed by Nokia, Motorola, Mozilla and others.
The new strategic alliance allows J2ME Polish developers to enrich their mobile applications automatically with advertising, without the need to change the source code of their applications. For selected applications J2ME Polish licenses are even provided for free, when advertisements revenues are shared.

Smaato’s open mobile advertising platform SOMA™ delivers advertising across all leading mobile operating systems, including JAVA, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Palm OS, as well as on mobile web pages. Smaato is partnering with ad-sales networks worldwide to provide access to mobile inventory on the most personal device with enhanced targeting features for relevant advertising.

“Thanks to Smaato’s innovative and open mobile advertising platform we can offer our developer community new revenue streams”, explained Robert Virkus, CEO of Enough Software.

“We are thrilled to extend our reach to the worldwide J2ME Polish developer community with this partnership”, said Ragnar Kruse, CEO of Smaato. “In-Application advertising allows developers to extend their reach and launch ad-enabled business models. This is a further step to broaden the reach of our open mobile ecosystem”.

Smaato at Mobile World Congress in Hall 2, booth 2B104

Enough Software at Mobile World Congress Hall 7, booth 7A43

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About Smaato Inc.

Smaato Inc. is a leading mobile advertising technology company that provides the open mobile advertising platform called SOMA (Smaato Open Mobile Advertising) for developers, publishers, ad sales networks and operators. The SOMA platform enables the delivery of targeted display advertising to mobile phones within applications and on mobile sites. SOMA’s unique feature is the SOMA client, which is a mobile ad server on the handset that optimizes the process of ad-enabling applications for mobile software developers. SOMA can be easily integrated with 3rd party ad sales networks, ad inventory owners (developers, publishers, operators) and ad technology providers. Smaato is an active member of the Mobile Marketing Association, the dot.mobi Advisory Group and the German digital media association BVDW. Smaato received a Top 100 Private Company award by AlwaysOn Media (US) in January of 2007. Smaato Inc. is based in San Mateo, California. The privately held company was founded in 2005 by an experienced international management team. The European headquarter is in Hamburg, Germany.

About J2ME Polish – Enough Software

Enough Software is the company behind J2ME Polish. This development solution overcomes the device fragmentation barrier and provides design, customization, persistence and rapid development features for Java ME developers. Using J2ME Polish developers can target all Java ME, Windows Mobile, Android, iPhone and BlackBerry devices. With a highly active community, more than 600,000 downloads and a book published by Apress, J2ME Polish is the de-facto standard for mobile developers worldwide. Learn more about J2ME Polish at www.j2mepolish.org.

The Service Provider Forum of the Telecom Council of Silicon Valley’s Zephyr Award for Best Mobile Opportunity

San Mateo, California - February 7, 2008 – Smaato, a pioneering provider of mobile advertising platform technology announced that it has been nominated for a SPIFFY Award - The Zephyr Award for Best Mobile Opportunity.

These awards are given by the Service Provider Innovation Forum
(SPIF) of the Telecom Council of Silicon Valley to recognize and acknowledge outstanding innovation and execution by Telecom entrepreneurs. By their nomination, this global set of Operators and Service Providers including AT&T, British Telecom, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Swisscom, Vodafone and many others, have indicated to the rest of the Telecom industry that Smaato is a company to watch.
The Service Provider Forum Annual Networking and Recognition Event with the award ceremony will be held Feb. 28th in Palo Alto.

“Our Service Provider members review hundreds of new telecom ideas, products, and services each year, said Liz Kerton, President of The Telecom Council. ”While we saw plenty of mobile advertising startups in the past year, Smaato’s unique approach of an Open Mobile Ecosystem with their Mobile Advertising Platform stood out and got them nominated.”

The SPIF exists so that colleagues with similar goals and duties can gather and share ideas, contacts, opportunities, and knowledge. The member carriers have telecom operations across the globe, but usually have an office in the San Francisco Bay Area to pursue investment, technology, and partnership opportunities. At each meeting, a few interesting young companies present who are seeking funding, strategic investment or have a product or service that would be useful to the carriers. The Telecom Council of Silicon Valley and the Service Provider Forum (SPIF) are online at http://www.telecomcouncil.com.

Smaato’s open mobile advertising platform SOMA™ gets increased demand from ad-sales networks, developers and mobile operators. Smaato delivers groundbreaking ways to connect new generation software applications for mobile devices with targeted advertising. The latest version of the mobile ad-server platform SOMA™ (Smaato Open Mobile Advertising) supports full mobile Web and WAP advertising delivery.

The SOMA™ open architecture platform delivers advertising across all leading mobile operating systems, including JAVA, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Palm OS, as well as on mobile web pages. Smaato is partnering with ad-sales networks worldwide to provide access to mobile inventory on the most personal device with enhanced targeting features for relevant advertising. Partners include: Adconion Media Group and leading US-mobile ad-sales network Third Screen Media (now part of AOL’s Advertising.com business unit).

Smaato will be exhibiting at the upcoming Mobile World Congress
(3GSM) in Barcelona, Spain, February 11 - 14 in Hall 2 at booth 2B104.

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