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.
Comment by anon — April 10, 2007 @ 7:26 pm
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 (
Comment by Joakim — April 11, 2007 @ 12:57 am
I downloaded it. Sorry this is crap.
Comment by Dr. Feelbad — April 11, 2007 @ 4:39 am
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.
Comment by Craig — April 11, 2007 @ 11:22 pm
Beta release (relaunch of Beta!) is no excuse. Anyway, their service is useless.
I agree with comment #3. It is crap.
Comment by anon — April 12, 2007 @ 8:48 am
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.
Comment by Nick Gonzalez — April 12, 2007 @ 11:08 am
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.
Comment by Bob Jenkins — April 12, 2007 @ 3:33 pm
How in hell they got 12 mil, the app does not even login. It’s crap!
Comment by john — April 13, 2007 @ 9:20 am
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?
Comment by james — April 13, 2007 @ 10:02 am
Moblify.com, more than a Mobile Bookmark engine
Visit http://www.moblify.com
WAP URL : wam.tw
The mobile web can go places where the web cannot…for example …toilets ;-), serious…
No more wasting time in typing long names of websites to chrck ur mail on ur phone…or getting URL’s through SMS messages.
Moblify.com is a new way to look at the world wide web from a mobile.
Here’s a mobile web 2.0 startup site which intends to bring the PRETTY BAD internet out there to mobiles in a hasslefree manner and it also serves as a personal bookmark engine.
Moblify.com is a bookmarks engine for mobiles.
It works with any web URL, WAP site and .mobi site.
It uses the best mobile transcoders(google,iyhy,Skweezer,Phonifier) available in the market and tap-reduce mechanisms to achieve this.
Moblify.com is also a bookmark engine that will store all your bookmarks for use on any mobile browser or device.
And thats the reason why its mobile site is named wam.tw standing for Web and Mobile 2.0.
And best of all, as most other good web and mobile 2.0 companies , it is FREE.
Keywords:bookmark,social,mobile,wap,wml,mobi
Comment by Avinash — April 14, 2007 @ 7:37 pm
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?
Comment by Dr. Feelbad — April 17, 2007 @ 11:04 pm
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 !!?
Comment by momer — April 18, 2007 @ 11:53 am
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.
Comment by Kripson — April 19, 2007 @ 5:59 pm
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.
Comment by Tathagata — April 20, 2007 @ 2:21 am
I wonder where they got the idea for that name ;)
Comment by oobio — May 21, 2007 @ 6:56 am
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! :)
Comment by Kripson — May 23, 2007 @ 3:58 pm
http://hotxteens.info x
Comment by Nbkvqls — May 24, 2007 @ 1:16 pm