New Free Funambol White Paper Describes "End Game of the Mobile Address Book"

REDWOOD CITY, CA--(Marketwire - December 8, 2009) - Funambol, the leading provider of open source mobile cloud sync and push email for billions of phones, today announced the availability of a free new industry white paper, "The End Game of the Mobile Address Book." The report can be instantly downloaded from the Funambol product library at http://www.funambol.com/solutions/library.php with free registration.

According to the report, the number of address books that a person uses has increased from one to more than ten over the past several years. At the same time, a person's average number of contacts has grown from 45 to 180. The number of contact points for each person has also significantly increased (e.g., six phone numbers, four email addresses, several social network and IM IDs) and the frequency at which this information changes has accelerated. This makes losing one's address book no longer just a minor inconvenience but a major ordeal.

From an industry perspective, the white paper describes how the mobile address book has transformed into a highly strategic asset for mobile operators. The emergence of cloud-based social address books on smartphones from Apple, Google, Nokia and others poses a grave threat to operators. These address books act as "gateways" to mobile services provided by device manufacturers which threatens to diminish the role of the operator and hasten their demise into an undifferentiated commodity.

"The industry is changing rapidly, and user contact information is moving to the cloud," said Fabrizio Capobianco, Funambol CEO. "Whichever company owns the address book owns the customer. Mobile operators are being beat to the punch by device makers, and if they do not act quickly, they risk alienating and losing their customers."

The white paper examines major trends affecting the mobile address book and describes the current crop of smartphone address books. It projects the future "end game" of the mobile address book and provides a prescription to enable mobile operators to retain control of the address book and their subscriber loyalty.

About Funambol

Funambol is the #1 mobile open source project in the world and the leading provider of open source mobile cloud sync and push email solutions for billions of phones. Our open source software has been downloaded millions of times by 50,000 developers in 200 countries, which helps ensure that our software supports the latest devices most quickly. Our commercial software has been adopted by the top companies in mobile, including many of the largest device manufacturers, operators, service and content providers, software companies and system integrators. Funambol is headquartered in Silicon Valley with R&D in Europe. For more information, please visit http://www.funambol.com. You can also follow Funambol on Twitter at http://twitter.com/funambol.

Contact Information: Media Contact: Kim Terca for Funambol Page One PR 415-875-7492