AirFlash.com Inc., a privately held Silicon Valley start-up firm, has created a service bureau called AirFlash, taking a somewhat different approach to the wireless portal market.
The company is offering the service bureau to wireless voice carriers as a means of providing such services as location-based Yellow Pages, local event listings, local “things to do, places to see,” e-commerce applications like hotel booking and flower ordering, driving directions and traffic information, and travel and commuter alert notification.
Content can be delivered to any phone enabled with short message service functions or Wireless Application Protocol technology.
However, Rama Aysola, the company’s president and chief executive officer, called AirFlash a mobile portal, distancing it from other wireless portals in that it is not Internet-based and is a pull rather than push service.
First, he said the content is not really Internet-based. AirFlash.com is compiling its own databases, so content comes from AirFlash servers directly. Some of that content, though, will be collected from Internet sites. The difference, Aysola stressed, is the AirFlash portal will not offer wireless versions of existing Web sites or existing Web information.
“We’re not doing automatic conversion of Web content,” he said. “We’re making specific deals with content providers.”
Aysola said he believes Web conversion is an unwieldy task that takes too much time and is not best suited for the screens on mobile phones.
“Up until now, the only solutions presented have been wireless portals, relying on cumbersome Web-conversion and re-purposing methodologies and pushing Web pages into `fat phones,’ ” according to the company.
Not only is the origin of the information unlike other portals, but so is the means of its delivery. Rather than pushing information updates to users at certain scheduled times, AirFlash customers instead will query information in a pull model.
“Push services don’t work,” Aysola said. “People want ease of use and relevancy, while carriers want to offer services to as large a portion of their subscriber base as possible.” Push services, he said, only attract a portion of a carrier’s user base.
Key to this pull model is a patent-pending location technology that can determine the user’s location and send him or her information relevant to that area.
For instance, if a user were to request local restaurant listings, the service bureau would determine his location and transmit a list of restaurants in the immediate area. Going further, the service determines proximity not by an as-the-crow-flies approach, but rather by the distance to each restaurant by car. The reason being is that some places may be closer in A to B distance, but take longer if the roads to them are particularly complicated or are impeded by natural or man-made obstacles.
As AirFlash is a service bureau, Aysola said carriers licensing it may brand it and offer it to their subscribers at price levels they choose.
Most services are available under a flat fee. Others, like driving directions, carry a per-use cost. AirFlash charges carriers a flat licensing fee as well as a portion of every per-use charge. Additionally, any e-commerce transaction made via the framework is subject to a percentage from AirFlash.
Carriers licensing the framework can charge their subscribers whatever monthly fee they choose, or even offer it free to high-use customers. Carriers also gain a portion of the per-use fees and earn a percentage of any transactions made over their network.
