Print
Email
Print Edition Stories
Sandie Allen
Cable, telecom companies see net neutrality battle
Online video firms target small video publishing companies
New England prepared to leverage smart grid expertise
One of the hottest business sectors these days is mobile technology. And New England, in particular, has successfully managed to parlay its deep experience in making the equipment and infrastructure of telecommunications and networking.
While the storied companies of the past — Cabletron Inc., Chipcom and even Digital Equipment Corp. — were focused on the cutting edge of wired connectivity, wireless is now the hot topic.
There are plenty of hardware and equipment makers locally focused on building wireless parts, including chipmaker Skyworks Solutions Inc. of Woburn, which just posted record revenue, and mobile switch maker Starent Networks Corp., which was acquired by Cisco Systems Inc. for $2.9 billion in October.
But the hottest growth seems to be happening in mobile software and services, according to experts. Kate Imbach, co-founder and organizer of the networking organization Mobile Monday in Boston and Silicon Valley, will be launching the first Mobile Monday Brooklyn event this month. She sees the business activity bubbling over in all parts of the mobile stack — from single application developers to mobile data services providers to chipmakers.
“There’s a ton of energy behind mobile companies in Boston,” Imbach said.
The key for sustained growth for the small software startups, however, is in moving past just being an application developer, Imbach says.
“I think what’s interesting about the smallest companies is that, though they are just a single app play at first glance, behind them they have a much broader platform strategy,” she said. “The companies that are small now are going to get a lot bigger in ways that we won’t even expect.”
Scvngr Inc.
Location: Boston
Technology: Mobile platform
One of the fastest growing companies at the application level is one that has also realized early on that making a mobile platform for other apps to function on is key. Scvngr Inc., a Boston company that is barely over a year old, has made more than $1 million in revenue in its first year, according to founder and “chief ninja” Seth Priebatsch, by supplying the technology to enable customers to make scavenger hunt games and interactive tours that guide users via their mobile phones.
Now Priebatsch is planning to concentrate more on the development of the back-end technology to create one of the first of a category of mobile applications he is calling “geo-gaming.” Scvngr is almost at the end of a plan to double its staff size from 20 people in early December to 40 employees in just two months. The company is planning to expand into Europe with the funds taken from its latest financing, a $4 million round in December that saw Google Ventures joining previous investor Highland Capital Partners.
Following the European expansion, Scvngr will tackle Asia, initially targeting Japan and Korea and eventually China.
With the massive surge in growth, however, comes a few headaches, and Priebatsch said the biggest one is going to be the time it takes to get new hires ready for prime time.
“Its probably a good three months of training and time invested from our existing people to bring them up to speed,” he said, “and the value we get from doing that is that they produce.”
Skyhook Wireless Inc.
Location: South Boston
Technology: Location data
Inching toward elder statesman status in the young mobile industry is Skyhook Wireless Inc., which was founded in 2003. South Boston-based Skyhook provides location data to application developers and handset makers. As more mobile phones have location-based functions in them, such as maps or navigation apps, Skyhook in particular (and mobile in general) will see a business explosion, said founder and CEO Ted Morgan.
“A lot of us are thinking of it as the decade of mobile,” he said. “Just the sheer size of the numbers is making it bigger than anything we have ever seen.”
Morgan believes that it will make the Internet and telecom boom of the late 1990s pale in comparison. “If you didn’t like the previous bubble, you’d better sit it out,” he said.
Skyhook provides its location-based information gleaned from wi-fi hotspots all around the globe. That means the company keeps on staff between 400 and 500 full-time equivalents in the role of drivers who map routes in reference to hotspot location triangulation. Its core staff, however, has grown by about 25 percent in the past year to 35 employees, Morgan said.
While he wouldn’t reveal specifics about the company’s finances, Morgan did say that the last round of financing Skyhook took, an $8.5 million investment in 2007, was its last.
“We have no plans to add any more money,” he said.
As an indication of the immense growth the company has experienced, Morgan said, “Two years ago there was a handful of location-based mobile apps in the world and now there are 6,000 that use Skyhook. Our network across the board averages about 200 million location requests every single day.”
RSS Feeds
Comments
Please Login/Register to post comments.
No comments have been added or approved.