Contact Information: Media Contact: Kim Terca for Funambol Page One PR 415-875-7492
New Free Funambol White Paper Describes "End Game of the Mobile Address Book"
Discusses Strategy Behind Mobile Cloud Social Address Book and How Mobile Operators Can Avoid "Confusing and Losing Their Users"
| Source: Funambol
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.