MobUser

On Jan 1, 2008 mFoundry has now officially turned four years old. As I sit down and reflect on what we’ve seen and accomplished in 2007 I am amazed at how much farther we have come along in the Mobile Industry.

mFoundry Establishes itself as a Mobile Banking Market Leader

Without a doubt the single biggest business achievement in 2007 was the incredible success we achieved in the Mobile Banking sector. When we committed to mBanking as a vertical we were all hopeful that the gamble would pay off and it certainly has indeed. As we move into 2008 we have tremendous support from leading Banks, Operators, and Strategic Partners.

mFoundry Closes its Series C Financing

One of the most significant business events in 2007 was the closing of our Series C. Compared to previous rounds, this was the easiest. Our story was tight and we had a very clear business strategy that resonated with our investors. Aside from the addition of cash, this Series C brings with it a collection of very powerful strategic partners that will no doubt help to shape our future.

Firethorn is Aquired by Qualcomm

In a surprising move by Qualcomm, Firethorn was purchased in the later part of 2007. Firethorn has been considered by many to be our closest competitor in the Mobile Banking space. The acquisition by Qualcomm galvanized the Mobile Banking vertical and has sparked a wildfire of interest in us from Qualcomm’s competitors. This was perhaps the best thing that could happen to mFoundry (short of being purchased ourselves) as it instantly gave credibility to the Mobile Banking and Payments space.

Mojax Reaches 1.0 on J2ME and BREW

This took longer than I expected but I am very please to say that, after a year of development, we have a candidate release for Mojax 1.0 on both J2ME and BREW. This is due entirely to the excellent team of engineers and QA testers that all helped to bring Mojax to life.

Mojax continues to be what I consider the single most effective way to develop mobile applications. Though we have leveraged the power of Mojax in the pursuit of Mobile Banking, it is my continued vision to also see Mojax powering a myriad of other verticals. Our private Beta in 2007 has grown to almost 500 developers from all around the world. I am looking forward to continuing to grow our developer community and provide a simple and effective way for them to create mobile applications.

Apple iPhone and Google Android Introduced to the Market

One of the greatest strengths of Mojax is the fact that it will work on BREW and J2ME, two platforms that are so completely different from each other that developing or porting any application to them requires at least two development teams. Conversely, a Mojax Moblet created once (in a fraction of the time), will immediately run on both BREW and MIDP without ANY additional work. The introduction of the iPhone and soon Android devices into the market only further adds to the overall entropy in the mobile application space. Android, being Java-based, is the “easier” of the two new platforms to support; but iPhone is likely to be Objective-C based which will again require a separate development team to support. I have put the iPhone and Android on the Mojax roadmap for 2008 along with Windows Mobile.

What Does the Future Hold for mFoundry?

From a company perspective, 2008 will see mFoundry transition from 100% product development into a mix of development and product support. Our company size will grow as we add product solutions and support capabilities as well as ramp up our direct sales efforts. We will also continue to add to our list of mBanking channel partners.

Mojax will be ported to Windows Mobile, Android, and iPhone by the middle to end of 2008. Additionally, support for 3rd party Mojax Plug-in development will also be a priority for the early part of 2008.

By the end of 2008 I expect mFoundry’s product stack to be the most pervasive Mobile Banking platform in the US and for Mojax to be used by 3rd parties to create new exciting mobile verticals. 2007 was an exciting year but I expect 2008 to exceed our expectations.

Best wishes to everyone and to all a prosperous New Year!

- Rodney Aiglstorfer

According to the Associated Press, Spring Nextel Agrees to Unlock Phones. This could be a big deal for the J2ME community if a Sprint phone, with MIDP support, were unlocked and then used on the Verizon network. BREW and Qualcomm is the biggest bottle neck to getting free software onto handsets … this could be the first step to breaking down the Verizon “walled-garden”. This also begs the question “Will I be able to buy an unlocked Java capable phone from a 3rd party and use it on Verizon?”. Very interesting indeed!

By now news of the closing of our Series C round of financing is out. This time around was a very different experience from previous rounds. The biggest difference was the fact that all of our investors in this round were “strategic” investors and not traditional VCs. Some of the key strategic investors in the round are NCR, Motorola, and PayPal (yeah no kidding … wow!).

This round will give us the “endurance” to fully play out the Mobile Financial market here in United States as well as to push into Europe. However what really makes me excited is the potential all this has for Mojax. 2008 is going to be a very exciting year!

mFoundry has just been selected as one of Bank Technology News’ 10 Tech Companies to Watch. This is a huge honor in the banking space as it is a respected publication. What is even more awesome is that we are the only mobile company on the list!

The real story of Citi Mobile’s launch in April is not in its bill pay or funds transfer features, but how it’s delivered. Citi’s mobile offering is a downloadable mobile application built through a development toolkit from mFoundry that comes from the bank, rather than within the service container of a carrier’s menu. “Citi has taken a longer, harder look at long-term strategy” TowerGroup’s Bob Egan says, “and they’ve made a decision they want to own the infrastructure.” Most of the major m-banking intros in 2007 have centered around the managed services platform offering of Firethorn Holdings, an Atlanta developer that stoked regional deals with BancorpSouth, Regions, Wachovia and SunTrust Banks with an exclusive platform arrangement with AT&T, the wireless carrier with the largest subscriber base.

But mFoundry, with the Citi Mobile experience as the driver, may be better positioned to land forthcoming deals with national institutions focusing on adaptability for long-term shakeout in the mobile banking space. How will payments be handled? Will the database players shake the business model at some point?

mFoundry’s Spotlight provides control of the endpoint look-and-feel, adaptability to a bank’s online authentication, and has a head start in other key payments areas: it is already developing an integrated contactless payments platform with ViVOtech and has a formal relationship with First Data to handle money movement. “I believe you have to have an open ecosystem,” says mFoundry CEO and co-founder Drew Sievers. Some have likened the mFoundry/Firethorn rivalry as a replay of the Corillian/Digital Insight battle: DI with its plug-n-play templates, and Corillian’s customizable platform that large banks coveted. While the future is far from clear on mobile banking, any future will have to include the ability for a mobile solution to work within the lifetime value cycle of a customer. That’s going to take a major shift in the relationship with telcos. “Banks are moving to reengineer a lot of their architecture for things like SOA,” he says. “They’re not going to want to spend the equivalent of $1,000 a user to get mobile banking people developed as another delivery channel.” - GF

Technorati Tags: Banking, Business, mFoundry, mobile, moblet, mojax, Spotlight

I am pleased to announce that John Muchow has just joined the Mojax team! John is the author of Core J2ME and the blogger behind 360Mobile. John will be assuming the role of managing the Mojax developer community and in this role will provide Mojax developers with the resources and tools to quickly get up and running with Mojax. With John’s help, we hope to create a first class developer community around the Mojax platform … welcome John!

Technorati Tags: mojax

Last week mFoundry announced that Spotlight, which runs on Mojax, would support the iPhone. The question of how we would enable a Mojax Moblet to run on an iPhone has been a discussion topic around the expresso machine for several months. Mojax as a language is comprised of an XML based markup, CSS, Javascript, and a “Mobile” object model. By design, there is substantial overlap between the Mojax language and standard AJAX. As a result, the task of supporting iPhone will be the task of “transcoding” Mojax AJAX into standard AJAX.

Many approaches to transcoding Mojax were considered, but at the end of the day we decided that we would use OpenLaszlo as the target for the transcoder instead of directly transcoding MJX files into DHTML. I could list many reasons why OpenLaszlo is the better method of generating DHTML, but at the end of the day it came down to the fact that we all really hate working with HTML. OpenLaszlo’s language constructs and object model is pretty close to our own which will make the task of transcoding much simpler. An additional benefit to creating an OpenLaszlo transcoder is the fact that the Moblet, once transcoded, could also run as a Flash application.

It should be noted that by having a DHTML/AJAX transcoder for your Moblet also means that, in addition to running on an iPhone, your Moblets could also:

• Run within an iFrame on your website
• Run as a Gadget on your iGoogle home page
• Run as a portlet in Netvibes
• Run as a Widget on your Mac

Pretty cool stuff!

Technorati Tags: AJAX, mFoundry, mobile, mojax, OpenLaszlo, transcoding

I was originally drawn to mobile because it was a highly personalize experience that, with the right software, could greatly impact our daily lifestyle and the way we interact with the world. But the promise is still far from a reality … Device browsers are deficient, devices are inconsistent, standards are rarely observed, performance is unpredictable, operators discourage innovation, application development is cumbersome, SMS is expensive … DOING ANYTHING FOR MOBILE IS FRUSTRATING, DIFFICULT AND EXPENSIVE … after three years of dealing with all these challenges; I can tell you that I am am ready to do something about it. It is time for a technology that doesn’t add to the problem but instead starts to make a difference. I want Mojax to be that difference.

To that end I make the following promises …

Mojax Will Be Free to Use
Some of the most innovative ideas will come from individual engineers and small companies that cannot afford another technology investment. We will never charge for the use of Mojax. Instead we will provide value added services around Mojax … all of which will be entirely optional.

Mojax Will Be Pervasive
Mojax will run on all mobile device platforms. Before the end of this year you will already see support for J2ME, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, BREW, and WIPI; with support for a Native Symbian and Palm runtime sometime next year. You will never have to know *ANYTHING* about individual devices, you will never have to “port” your application or test on every device you want to run on … its the closest thing to “write once, run everywhere” you will likely ever get.

Mojax Will Download OTA
The Mojax runtimes are extremely small and are designed to be downloaded “Over the Air” (OTA). These runtimes will not need to be pre-installed by Operators or Device Manufacturers.

Mojax Will Always Be About the Mobile Device
I have no desire to see Mojax running on set-top boxes, toasters, desktops, or any appliance for that matter that is not a mobile device. Mojax will be highly specialize for mobile devices and will always strive to expose all aspects and features of the mobile device to the moblet developer.

Mojax Applications Will Be Easy to Develop
No one has the time to learn yet another development language and methodology. Mojax will leverage all the standards and concepts that have become standard in the Web development world (e.g. Javascript, CSS, XML, XPath).

Mojax Applications Will Be Easy to Deploy
If you have a Web Server, you will have everything you need to deploy a Mojax application.

Mojax Will Be Extensible by 3rd Parties
Mojax was built from the ground up to support plugins (or components as we call them). This extensibility will be available to more advanced developers that want to incorporate specific mobile technologies into Mojax.

Mojax Will Be Business Friendly
For as many problems as there are with mobile, there are just as many business models. “On-Deck”, “Off-Deck”, Ad-Funded, Subscriptions, One-time-fees, and the list goes on … Mojax will be licensed in such a way as to not preclude any business model. If you can find a way to make money off of your Moblet … GO FOR IT!

Technorati Tags: mFoundry, mobile, mojax, Business

On Jan 1 2007 mFoundry will officially be three years old. I am amazed at how quickly 2006 has come and gone. It seems like only yesterday that we were just a bunch of guys that got together on Thursday nights for beer and pizza.

2006 was a pivotal year for mFoundry. Looking back on 2006 I can see how much we all accomplished and learned. Going into 2006, mFoundry struggled to find the right business application for its technology. mWorks, our flagship product, was a mature platform upon which mobile applications were being quickly and cost-effectively developed and deployed across a broad range of J2ME and BREW devices. However, we realized early on that without a strong business vertical or “killer-app” to put the platform into context, it would be difficult to build a sustainable business around just the mWorks platform itself.

The following is an account of what strategies and markets we went after and their results …

“Premium” Mobile Application Revenues Sucked
The biggest disappointment of 2006 were Sold-to-Consumer or “Premium” mobile applications. Luckily, we discovered early in the year, that premium mobile content was a terrible business for anyone except the Carrier. Carriers took a hefty chunk of the revenue and the rest was split between us and the content owner. Consumer adoption of a premium application was heavily dependent on promotion by Carriers as well as by the Content providers. Carriers would not promote to the degree necessary to generate an interesting amount of adoption; and in the case of the Content providers, the Mobile application was a small part of their overall service and were not motivated enough to promote it heavily either.

None of us at mFoundry much cared for the concept of “Premium” applications but saw that it was the only way to get into the carriers and so did what was necessary. The one positive result from our escapades in “Premium” Mobile Applications was that we were able to create some lasting relationships with carriers and demonstrate to the world that mWorks was a real solution that worked … and worked well.

Free “Ad-Based” Mobile Applications Show Promise
Much later in the year, we created a very cool Moblet for Sprint called the “Sprint Mobile News Stand”. It is distributed for Free and promoted by the Carrier heavily. It contains some advertising and some sponsored content. Adoption of the Free content was SIGNIFICANTLY higher than any of the premium applications (not surprisingly) and the retention was better as well. It is a little early to tell … but this continues to be an area of interest to me and I look forward to seeing more Ad-Based/Free mobile applications in the future. In fact, I have created a small company called CellShift to explore how social networking, the Web, and mobile could be combined to create a compelling Free-To-Consumer/Ad-Based business.

Mobile Applications for Work Groups are a Proven Success
Some might rather refer to Mobile Applications for Work Groups as Mobile Application for the Enterprise, but I disagree. As it relates to a Business, most useful mobile applications enable smaller work groups rather than entire enterprises. mWorks is ideally suited to enabling specific tasks that are better served in the field where a laptop is impractical to too expensive. In 2006 we created some compelling mobile solutions for Work Groups that save their companies millions of dollars in costs that were eliminated as a result of the moblet. Success in this area has spurred other companies to license mWorks directly and build solutions for themselves. Mobile solutions for Work Groups is uniquely suited to mWorks because it can be licensed very cheaply and need not have massive adoption to be financially interesting to mFoundry.

Banking, Banking, Banking
In early 2006 Citi selected mWorks as the platform for their mobile banking product. This opportunity taught us much about the mobile banking space and by the end of 2006 we had a fully crafted offering called mBanking that we are now actively selling. mBanking will likely become the most significant solution developed using mWorks. Point in fact, it has opened opportunities and partnerships that would not have been possible had we been only a platform company. I can’t disclose the specifics of these partnership at this time but we will be making several announcements early this year.

mojax, The Next Generation
As compelling as mWorks is, I wanted to do more with mobile. As early as November 2005 I started to design a new platform called mojax. mojax is one of the worlds first Mobile AJAX Application Frameworks. Unlike traditional AJAX Web Frameworks, mojax Moblets do not run within a browser and are not subject to the availability and quality of a network connection. Also, unlike a web application running on a mobile device, a mojax moblet has access to lower level device features such as Camera API, Push Messaging, Bluetooth, Location Services, Contacts and more. Unlike mWorks, mojax is an extremely open system that leverages existing open standards such as XML, CSS, and Javascript to enable developers to create applications with even greater functionality that before but still maintain all the benefits of mWorks (e.g. Device agnostic, Easy to develop, and extremely cost effective to deploy). Mojax is nearing the end of its beta phase and we should start to see deployments of mojax as soon as Q1 of this year.

As you can see it really has been an exciting year. I can’t begin to imagine what 2007 holds in store for us. Best wishes to everyone and to all a prosperous New Year!

- Rodney Aiglstorfer

Technorati Tags: mFoundry, mobile, moblet, mojax, mworks

I was happy to see that I made the 2006 JavaOne Conference Rock Stars list for my presentation “Troubleshooting Java ME Technology: Tips from the Pros“. It is an honor to be included in a list of speakers like Josh Bloch, from Google, who did an excellent session titled “Effective Java Reloaded” and Dion Almaer, founder of Ajaxian who did a really nice Introduction to AJAX.

We’ve been using Google Analytics to track the usage of all of our web sites for a while now and I must say that it is one of the best web analytics tools I have used. Lately I’ve been digging into the Javascript code that I have to include into a page so that it can be tracked to see if it is possible to leverage Google Analytics to track Moblet usage.

mojax applications are effectively Javascript applications that run on a mobile device and as such share many of the characteristics of a browser with a few notable exceptions. As a result it should be possible to make all the same asynchronous calls that a web browser makes to the google tracking service within a mobile application. The implications should be obvious but a solution like this would provide the best insight into how a moblet is used as well as ways to improve upon it. I’ll post again on this issue once I have something up and running!

With the release of GMail Mobile, Google is changing the way the mobile industry distributes mobile applications and is validating the demand for non-entertainment based mobile application services. Along with Google Maps Mobile, Google is distributing mobile applications for free and directly to the consumer. As companies start to see the success of Google’s mobile applications more will start to look to mobile as the natural extension to their existing web applications. The reality, however, of building a mobile application for mass-market devices is not something a typical company can deliver due to the expense of developing a mobile application that will actually run across so many different devices.

mojax was designed from the start to enable companies and individuals without the resources of Google to create equally compelling mobile applications that run across most mass-market devices. In effect, anyone with AJAX development experience will be able to create applications of the quality of Google in a fraction of the time and with the resources they already have. The future is looking very bright!

With the success of Google and other sites that have used AJAX style UIs to their advantage, an upsurge in AJAX frameworks and Rich Internet Applications (RIA) are in big demand. To illustrate the point, Yahoo and Google have both created Open Source AJAX frameworks that extend their core services to the developer community. Suffice it to say that RIA and AJAX are the foundation upon which web sites will be created for the conceivable future. What is interesting to me is that many of these sites today are looking for mobile solutions.

What is most interesting is that all of the successful RIA frameworks available today are available as Open Source. The companies offering the frameworks vary as widely as the business models that back them up. Yahoo and Google offer their frameworks as OSS to build brand equity with the developer community; StartUps offer OSS frameworks that are commercialized with Tools, Literature, Support, and Consulting Services. One constant however is that these frameworks are being adopted at an amazingly high rate.

Mojax is a best-in-class solution that is positioned to lead the convergence of Web based Rich Internet Apps and Mobile by leveraging technologies that are de-facto standards in the Internet space today (AJAX, Javascript, CSS and XML). This begs the question, “Should Mojax be open source?”
Read more

Well it has been a long road, but I am very happy to say that Mojax has reached its first major internal milestone and is now being tested. Developers have begun to use Mojax and the feedback is extremely positive.

Overview
mojax is the evolution of what began with mWorks 1.0; the goal of which was to provide the easiest way to leverage existing skill sets to develop compelling mobile applications that would run across the broadest range of devices. mWorks 1.0 provided a simple XML based language (MIL) with support for XPath and synchronous XML data services. Mojax is a complete rewrite of mWorks 1.0 which runs in a much smaller footprint (50k) and adds some significant language enhancements …

Mobile AJAX has Arrived!
The most important enhancement to MIL 2.0 is its substantial support for JavaScript, CSS, and Asynchronous XML Data Services … in other words … AJAX! If you don’t know the significance of that then know that AJAX is the technology foundation for “Web 2.0″.

Designers Welcome!
With mWorks 1.x we provided a lot less flexibility in the UI. We still believe that the SliderUI is a pretty slick way for a user to interact with their device, but we knew it wasn’t the only way to deliver information. With Mojax just about anything is possible. Much in the same way that AJAX libraries like Scriptaculous and Dojo are giving users a simple way to animated visual elements on screen, so too does MIL 2.0. Using MIL 2.0 you can manage graphical layers, animate any element on the screen, and even control transparency!

… and the best of all … IT’S FREE!!
Nothing is more frustrating to a developer than having to always have a business case and $$ to try out a cool idea … some ideas create new business after all! Mojax will be free for anyone to download and use for commercial and non-commercial applications. WHAT??!! yes, you read correctly … Mojax will be free because we have a number of supporting products and services that we sell in addition to the core platform. In fact we will be one of the very first to offer full ad-serving capabilities within any Moblet. All you have to do is create a cool mobile application and we will help you distribute and monetize it … its so easy to use we think you’ll love it!

Public Beta Coming Soon!
We will soon be extending the beta to the public. If you are interested in being part of this beta send an email to beta at mfoundry dot com!

Recently Google announced that they are releasing Google AdSense for feeds. I find this to be a very exciting development … but not for the reasons that you might think. Google AdSense for feeds are officially intended to enable content developers (e.g. Bloggers) to more fully syndicate their content without losing ad revenues. Much like AdSense for content, AdSense for feeds embeds relevant advertising directly into the RSS content.

What makes me excited is this notion that Google is providing a very basic solution that could be used to insert advertising into ANY XML feed. Yes, RSS is the most pervasive XML schema used but there are so many custom XML feeds and web service that have been developed that would directly benefit from the work Google is doing.

Take as an example flight search. Companies like Flytecomm expose XML service that enable the query of flight status information. Each query returns a list of flights between two points, their estimated arrival and departure times, and a host of other useful bits of information. This kind of information is extremely valuable to many advertisers. With Google AdSense for feeds, an XML response to a flight status query could contain advertising for such things as rental car offers, hotels, and more.

Like I said … very exciting. I can’t wait to try this stuff out.

Large companies and online services like Google and Ebay all have APIs now designed to extend their services to 3rd party businesses. These services provide an integration mechanism for 3rd party developers to create business tools and extensions. The services are exposed as SOAP and/or REST style XML APIs which can be easily consumed by a Moblet. This, of course, begs the question, “Would these services be as useful if consumed by a Moblet?”

It is not immediately apparent if B2B XML services would be useful on a phone … but they are highly visible brands with XML services that anyone can get access to. Google for example provides an API for Google AdWords which they describe as:

Google’s free AdWords API service lets developers engineer computer programs that interact directly with the AdWords server. With the applications created, advertisers and third parties can more efficiently - and creatively - manage their large AdWords accounts and campaigns.

I’m considering creating a Dashboard of sorts that would allow a marketer/business user to view information on how their AdWords campaigns are performing. The main question here is of course “Is that useful information to consume on a device”?

Alternatively, EBay exposes APIs designed to allow 3rd party tools that enable power users to integrate their ERP and CRM systems directly into the EBay world. Again, how might these service be consumed on a mobile device … and would it be useful or simply an academic exercise?

Mobile content in the United States today is traditionally sold directly by carriers via their WAP decks (referred to as “On Deck”). The advantages to this approach is that the content developer need not be concerned with managing the financial transaction or providing the physical infrastructure required for provisioning. The downside is that the carriers often take as much as 60% of the revenue and pay you the remaining 40% every 90 days. Add to this the fact that you will likely not be able to have a direct relationship with the carriers and will be required to distribute via an approved publisher who will extract another 20% - 30% of the revenue before paying you whatever is left over. This dismal arrangement begs the question: “Is there no better way for me to distribute my content?”

Premium SMS or PSMS
In Europe most mobile content is sold “Off Deck” (e.g. not directly by the carriers). Premium SMS or PSMS is the de-facto standard for receiving payment for content. PSMS is the SMS equivalent of a 1-900 number. The user sends an SMS to a special 5 digit “short code” with some text in the body that indicates what content they wish to receive. Use of the short code results in a fee being charged on the user’s phone bill which is collected by an SMS aggregator and later payed to you, the content developer. The advantages to this are similar to that of the “On Deck” distribution model with the added advantage that the carriers need not approve your content. The downside is that you will still get nickel-and-dimed by SMS aggregator and the carriers (who charge the SMS aggregator for the PSMS message).

Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
One way to get around the charges of the carrier and the SMS aggregators is to use an IVR provider to host a 1-900 number that a user can call and using their touch tone phone provide the information required for you to provide the appropriate content. Companies like BeVocal provide hosted IVR systems that can be easily adopted to provided exactly this functionality. The advantage to this scenario is that you collect a much larger piece of the transaction because you remove the carrier and the SMS aggregators.

Direct from Internet
Another option, for those that are capable of hosting the physical infrastructure required for provisioning content to a device (which is non-trivial but not impossible) there is always the option of selling your content from a web site. Setting up a merchant account is pretty strait forward and turn key. In this model you will save the most on expense and keep the lion share of the transaction.