SIMchronise Selects Leading Mobile Open Source Company Funambol to Provide Core Engine for Integrated Synchronisation Solutions

Irish based SIMchronise to Offer Mobile Data Backup Services Across Europe.

DUBLIN, Ireland, December 11th, 2006 – SIMchronise, the Irish mobile data synchronisation company, announced that it has chosen Funambol to provide core technology for its suite of Mobile Data Synchronisation and Mobile Data Management Products that are set for launch in various European countries from now through Q1, 2007.

“With growing rates of lost, stolen, damaged and upgraded handsets, the ability to restore valuable personal and business contacts and other data to a new phone with ease has become critical for every mobile user," said Philippe Joly, SIMchronise CEO. "We saw an opportunity to offer an integrated solution that provides customers with full backup and restore services of mobile contacts, calendar, tasks and other data. Our main challenge was finding a robust data synchronisation engine that also offers high device compatibility. Funambol, as the leading mobile open source software, was the perfect answer to our needs.”

Funambol, started in 2001 as Sync4j, is the leading open source implementation of SyncML, and the de facto industry standard for mobile data synchronisation. Funambol is supported by the largest mobile developer community in the world, and it is the fastest growing middleware platform with nearly 1,000,000 downloads.

Funambol recently introduced the Phone Sniper program that provides incentives and recognition to community members for testing mobiles. This is part of Funambol's aim of increasing the adoption of consumer mobile services such as PIM backup and mobile email via broad device compatibility. Funambol’s global community of open source developers has put the company in a natural position to lead this effort.

“A major obstacle to mass adoption of wireless services is that carriers struggle to support the large variety of devices used by their subscribers,” says Fabrizio Capobianco, Funambol CEO. “Phone Sniper will drastically improve the breadth and depth of device compatibility, giving service providers the confidence to aggressively deploy new mobile services that increase revenue and reduce churn. We are very pleased to work with SIMchronise to deliver this next generation of mobile services for the masses.”

SIMchronise is launching mobile contact backup services initially in the UK, Germany and Ireland, which are built using synchronisation (SyncML) and Over-The-Air (OTA) technology. The services are completely wireless and require no additional devices, software programs, cables, Bluetooth or infrared. They allow users to backup all the contacts on their mobile phone to a private secure online area. The user can retrieve saved contacts anytime, from virtually anywhere in the world, eliminating the headache of losing valuable personal and business contacts whenever the user's mobile phone is lost, stolen, damaged or upgraded.

“Our mission is to provide mobile users with complete peace of mind, anywhere, anytime," said Philippe Joy. "To achieve that, we rely on our relationship with Funambol to deliver fully integrated mobile data synchronisation solutions. Funambol will also help us establish our company as a leading global integrator of synchronisation technology."

The Mobile Data Synchronisation solutions offered by SIMchronise deliver significant advantages to Independent resellers in search of attractive value-added services, independent of the operators, allowing their customers to have the flexibility to switch networks when they replace their phone. It also appeals greatly to Mobile Network Operators who see an opportunity to both tie customers to their network, impacting positively on retention and churn figures, and to generate additional revenue from these services.

SIMchronise is currently in various stages of active negotiation with a number of Mobile Network Operators, Mobile Phone Retail Chains, and Independent Resellers, with an aim to deploy more integrated backup services during 2007 and penetrate key target territories.

Editorial Contacts

Name: Philippe Joly
Mobile: +353 (0)85 1637419
Tel: +353 (0)1 678 8590
Email: info@simchronise.com

About SIMchronise Limited,

SIMchronise is an Irish Company headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, with engineering efforts spread across Europe.

Founded by a team of technology entrepreneurs, the company is currently operating mainly in Europe, and has further plans to operate in Africa, amongst other markets.

The founder's expertise of the mobile and wireless industry serves as a foundation to SIMchronise's success in securing strong partnerships with key industry leaders in SyncML and OTA technologies, to deliver innovative and easy-to-use backup services to Operators, ISP's and VAS retailers.

The management team of the company share a complementary background, gained over the past 10 years within a variety of market leaders in Internet and Mobile Technology, including AOL/Time Warner, Bertelsmann/Arvato group, Lycos, and Eason Electronic.

SIMchronise is a privately held high-potential start-up that was invited to present, earlier this year, at the Goodbody Stockbrokers SummIT 2006 Conference, among Ireland's most promising private High-Tech companies.

See www.SIMchronise.com for more details.

This release was published on openPR.