By taking an open-source approach to mobile mail and contact syncing, Funambol is cracking the problem of creating applications across 850 different mobile handsets. The company raised $12.5million in a series B financing led by Nexit Ventures. Castile Ventures and existing investors Walden International and H.I.G Ventures also participated. Funambol previously raised $5 million in a series A in August, 2005, and then a previously undisclosed follow-on of $5.5 million in December, 2006. The company is also in the process of raising another $2 million in venture debt to bring the total capital raised to $25 million.
The company is based in Redwood City, California, with most of its employees and development engineers located south of Milan, Italy. (Of the company’s 75 employees, 45 are in Italy). It is behind one of the largest mobile open-source projects. Its syncing engine has been downloaded more than two million times by developers. Funambol’s syncing software works on phones running Symbian, Windows Mobile, OS X (the iPhone), Jave ME, Mobile Linux, Blackberry, and Android. The community edition that Funambol supports works with Exchange, Domino, POP and IMAP email servers. CEO Fabrizio Capobianco explains:
There are three billion phones you need to make work. It is very complicated. You’d need thousands of employees. We solve this with open source. We have 1,000 people per country make our application work.
He is even creating an iPhone app that will essentially offer a free version that partly replicates some of the main features of Apple’s new MobileMe service. How does he plan to make money? Selling the community edition of his syncing server to ISPs and email providers like AOL, which will be using Funambol to synchronize mobile and online messages. He thinks a messaging app, not a mobile Web browser, is the best place to show mobile ads to consumers. Capobianco says:
The real focus is ad-based mobile messaging. It is an untapped market. It is huge. The mobile messaging client is the most used client on the device. It is a communications device—you either talk or you message. So that is the best conduit for advertising.
He figures that with as little as ten emails a day, that generates 30 impressions a day, or about 1,000 a month, which is a CPM (cost per thousand—the metric used to measure online ads) Each mobile subscriber in his eyes is a CPM, and he says he can get $15 to $20 CPMs today. And he splits that three ways with the service provider and the ad network supplying the ads. Stll, with mobile those numbers can add up fast.
$5M Series A, $5.5M Series Follow-On, $12.5M Series B. I know later stage rounds can make you think the company is spinning its wheels, but even my 6-year old knows his A-B-C’s.
So the business model is basically a mobile spam enabler?
I’m not 100% on the online advertising game, so please forgive my ignorance, but isn’t CPM a measure of how much an publisher can get for showing an ad to 1000 viewers? If that’s the case, then how can one user be a CPM?
Also 10 emails = 30 impressions? Does that mean there will be 3 ads per email? Sounds like a bum deal to me.
As a sync client developer, I regard Funambol is the best implementation of SyncML so far. They deserve big investment, and hopefully they will also use the funding to improve the slow and not reliable my.funambol web service.
FIREFOX 3 is released and they are looking for a GUINNEESS WORLD RECORD.
Check out http://vishtecho.blogspot.com
“It is a communications device—you either talk or you message” or read spam or click on spam because users love spam. Oh yeah, messages on how i can hook up with Kate, a lonely local blonde, are going to fetch $15 CPM. Spam in mobile messaging is an untapped market, i wonder why.
I hope they have some other business plan in stealth. Is this company actually making money? It has been 3 years since round A. The investors are banking on a very long hockey stick.
This is ridiculous, and most of the comments reflect that fact. Mobile messaging, where a message from my friend is sandwiched between ads sounds like a way to encourage me never to install this crap.
“Get your free FIMA phone with a bucket of Popeye’s!”
not sure why that quotation seems relevant, it just does.
@2,6,7
I don’t quite understand why these comments tried to link Funambol with spamming. I think Funambol is just Sync product with SyncML. And everyone can purchase a copy of Funambol server to run sync or spam messaging. Who run spamming? Funambol or ISPs?
Maybe you didn’t RTF, so I’ll help you out:
“The real focus is ad-based mobile messaging. It is an untapped market. It is huge. The mobile messaging client is the most used client on the device. It is a communications device—you either talk or you message. So that is the best conduit for advertising.”
Not sure what you make of that, but all of us certainly understood what was meant. The location-based services (loopt, brightkite) companies also think they will be able to spam you based on how close to a store you are. Rude awakenings are ahead.
Here is another choice quotation from the article you failed to read or understand, “And he splits that three ways with the service provider and the ad network supplying the ads.”
test comment
sent from: fav.or.it [FID160692]
Before getting into the other stuff, the funambol iphone app only syncs contacts, which is hardly a competitor for mobileme.
…
The thing about sync apps is that they should be invisible. Once you set it up, it should just work from then on. You should never have to go into the sync app, so no point in putting ads there.
So where is the connection between funambol and serving ads?
Funambol isn’t an IM service, so no ads for IM.
So that leaves ads in email…
Most sync apps work by syncing the data into the appropriate datastore on the device (email db for email, cal db for calendar, etc), which is then accessed by the native built in app for that data. IE. You would sync your email, then access it with the standard iphone email app.
The best devices have email clients (BlackBerry, iPhone), so guess what the followers will also do?
So most devices will have built in email clients shortly…
How does funambol help serve ads for AOL?
A proprietary Funambol/AOL app to read your email? I can already easily sync up my email with free email services on the iPhone, why would I download a new app, full of ads?
An aol version of yahoo go?
AOL inserts ads into emails? Free services have been doing that for a while, nothing new there…
I’m sure I missed something here… I don’t understand how this would work.
Lou
http://nexthaus.com
this opens up the market even further for mobile advertising, spam? maybe not, but for smaller market companies and even large ones, they can now target the user directly, especially when syncing aol’s mobile and email. I like this, besides AOL this could be used for anything, from ads, to mobile mail awareness.
Hello,
since I am the one quoted in the article, let me answer a few comments.
@2, 6, 7, 10 : No, we do not spam anyone. The ad is a microbanner on the top of the email client. Check http://www.funambol.com/news/F.....Email5.jpg and let me know if that bothers you. If it does, you should also stop reading emails on Gmail and searching with Google… If there is something we are going to be very careful on doing is making ads not intrusive and useful. If they are not, we are screwed
@6 : Yes, we are making money. Cash flow positive at the beginning of the year
@12 : No comments, we are not sharing tips with competitors :-)) Good luck on your efforts, I see you are doing great things and I am impressed by the quality of your work. Being a bit more open would help you greatly, if I might add a suggestion
@5 : Agreed, go download Firefox today. It is download day. Go open source. http://www.firefox.com
Cheers,
fabrizio
AOL is still running? I thought they moved to farming or doing something else by now.
Regarding the service, “spamming” might become a tool for carriers to offer discounted or free services (adding a “few” ads to your messages)
There are many ways in which carriers can offer a free service. Maybe they’ll try a couple if marketing department finds a good way to sponsor them.
Free service would be sweet. There’s been speculation that Google at one point was interested in purchasing sprint and turning it into a free ad-supported service…. http://www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?rta=blog
@14 That’s just a little of me trying to think things through in my head…
Nothing wrong with a little competition. There always seems to be a place for both open and closed source.
As for openness, I am always available to talk, and I participate as much as possible in discussions like this. Even though the code isn’t open, I would say that we are quite open as an organization.
I also find the secrecy around “tips” a bit ironic =)
#Fabrizio
Stop using Gmail? WRONG! I use IMAP and POP (depending on the account) access.
Nice try though, you can keep your banners, thnx.