Mobio, which we’ve covered previously, is launching the public beta of its mobile application platform today. They’re pitching themselves as a “lifestyle platform” to consumers, where you can access all kinds of data on the go, such as restaurants, weather, and flight schedules. However, to developers, Mobio is a mashup platform, enabling developers to weave together all kinds of information into a single application.
The Mobio platform is not open to all developers yet, but they have already developed 50 of their own free applications. One example is their movie time search engine, where you can find the closest movie theater, map directions to it, and buy your tickets from within your phone. See some demos here.
The platform is a fairly light J2ME application, 220kb, when compared with beefier mobile applications from Yahoo, 770kb, and works on some non-smartphones like the Razor (here’s a full list of supported phones). Blackberry support coming soon. Mobio applications will push most of processing weight on to Mobio’s servers, requiring only tiny (sometimes 2kb) downloads to add new applications. The installation of these applications will be handled by Mobio. Users will be able to manage these Mobio applications on a web account.
Mobio is backed by $9 million from InterWest Partners and Storm Ventures. They recently did a deal with 9 Indian carriers, which gave some of their applications placement on about 70% of Indian phones. In the U.S, Mobio is off deck. Getting on deck position can sometimes cost upwards of $1 million.
MobileCrunch has covered several other mobile content platforms such as Bluepulse, Widset, and ZenZui. Blupulse is a mobile social networking application that works on nearly any phone, and which we raved about previously. Widset is a disappointing RSS reader from Nokia and ZenZui is a Microsoft-backed attempt to widgetize webpages to ease web navigation.
Mobio has nothing new to offer. At two separate events when the demo didn’t work Mobio management seemed clueless.
Definiteley interesting to see new ventures in the mobile media space.
I work for Mobispine which is a mobile media company that mobilizes existing web-based content. Already today you can find more than 20,000 RSS-feeds in the mobile directory.
End-users simply download a very small Java client (
I downloaded it. Sorry this is crap.
Mobio’s application has great potential and am really excited to test it out. I saw their demo at DEMO and it looks awesome. For those claiming its not great yet, first it is a BETA release and a fresh one at that…second, do you understand how freaking hard it is to do what they are attempting to do? Actually make an app lightweight and split the architecture to put the heavy lifting on the backend so the app runs light on the phone? Not easy and won’t be conquered in a day, but over time should be the winning combination.
Beta release (relaunch of Beta!) is no excuse. Anyway, their service is useless.
I agree with comment #3. It is crap.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to try it out because I only have a blackberry, which the platform doesn’t support yet.
Anyway, I think the concept is a good one. Mobile really needs a better platform for running applications than needing to install a new Java program for every new application. The idea of having one program that can seamlessly run other (even simple) programs is a good one.
The feeling I’m getting is that mobile companies are stymieing the development of open standards in order to maintain their control over the network and their users. If you can go to any network and get the same set of features, then carriers will be forced to compete only on price for voice and data plans.
Maybe it’s the webapp part of me talking, but I think that to be competitive in the long run, mobile carriers need to get in the mobile web application business. Otherwise, other mobile companies are going to own the killer apps of the future.
Anon & Dr Feelbad…what exactly have you done in mobile that is so fantastic?
You make yourselves look like fools with these comments…at least be constructive.
In my view it is a smart approach to fixing a vexing problem in mobile. I can agree with some of the comment about their beta and it needs more work (it is a BETA!) but if Mobio can develop this a bit further it will be everything Yahoo Go, Widsets, Google Maps and those others want to be, but are not.
And that isn’t bad start for a start up.
How in hell they got 12 mil, the app does not even login. It’s crap!
I second this. What crap. Didn’t work on three phones I tried. In fact it locked, and now I can’t even delete it. What’s worse they don’t even have their desktop ajax working properly to register there. What are they spending their money on?
Bob Jenkins:
What make you think I need to qualify myself to you in order to have an opinion?
You are a megalomaniac. However, I’ll tell you what I didn’t do: I didn’t release a Beta that didn’t work.
I understand that a Beta will have some flaws. This product is (still) crap. Why are you such a cheerleader? And why should we listen to your opinion?
It’s crap.
They will get their ass handed to them by mojax.mfoundry.com. Which has already been in beta for sometime.
And it works.
How DID these people get $12m !!?
Have heard a lot of talk, but just got an email from them that it doesn’t work with Verizon yet. Definitely interested to check it out if/when they get there.
In the meantime, I’m sticking with Mosio http://www.mosio.com - it’s not free (subscription-based, $3.95/month), but it’s very cool and it works with my carrier.
I am a product manager at Webaroo, and we just beta launched our mobile client (mobile.webaroo.com), a J2ME app that offers your web to go. You can access your favorite web services, rss feeds, web content and more on your mobile phone.
With limited screen space, we believe personalization is the key to offering a better user experience. Our app allows users to build / customize their library of content. Also, our app caches content wherever possible to provide a faster and always-on browsing experience. The app is fairly light weight (~ 148KB) and is supported on many devices (http://mobile.webaroo.com/supported-devices), with more devices to follow.
I wonder where they got the idea for that name ;)
According to their FAQs, Mosio is a play on the term “Mociology”, “the study of human behaviour in a mobile world and the study of mobile device/phone lifestyles.” It was coined in 2005 by Ralph Simon, a leading mobile content expert.”
http://www.mosio.com/faq.html
I see mobio and oobio are taken, it looks like nobio.com expires on August 30, ripe for the pickins! :)