Funambol - Open Source Mobile 2.0 company raises $12.5 million
Tiny URL: http://tinyurl.com/5jc95f
Funambol Inc. announced today that it has raised $12.5 million in series B funding the leading provider of Mobile 2.0 messaging software powered by open source, today announced that it has secured $12.5 million in Series B funding led by mobile-focused venture capital firm Nexit Ventures. Castile Ventures participated as a new investor and was joined by existing investors, Walden International and HIG Ventures. The new financing brings Funambol’s total funding to $25 million.
Funambol provides open source push email and PIM sync solutions for more than 1.5 billion mobile devices, including phones from Apple, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG and others. Mobile operators and service providers around the globe, including Earthlink in the U.S. and 1&1 in Europe, have adopted the commercial version of the company’s software.
AOL has also signed up with Funambol to help with synchronization for AOL’s online and mobile mail services. Funambol is headquartered in Redwood City, CA with an R&D center in Italy.
The company makes money by selling software support and licenses for its commerical version of the software stack to potential carriers and phone manufacturers.
The Carrier Edition offers more functionality than the free community edition. Enhancements include
- A superset of functionality that makes it suitable for mass deployment. It includes several critical capabilities that are not in Community Edition such as an end user portal for auto-provisioning and management of PIM data and email settings; over-the-air (OTA) device configuration and delivery of mobile applications; SMS gateway integration; a web-based interface for customer service representatives; and regular phone pack updates to support the latest mobile phones.
- Is certified on commercial infrastructure such as commercial RDBMSs and app servers that enable it to be deployed in massively scaleable, high availability and fault-tolerant environments.
- Is covered by a commercial license agreement that enables customers to maintain the privacy of their code.
- Is used as part of Funambol professional service engagements and is supported by Funambol.
