Four years after it was founded, MacroPort is finally coming to market.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based startup unveiled its first offerings this week, launching a suite of wireless software designed to allow users to access and transfer content and applications on phones and PCs. The software includes a “Universal Loader” that automatically accesses audio, video and other content, and a product that automatically synchs phones with computers to transfer songs, photos or other files on a memory card.
“We were founded in 2001 around the premise that getting content on and off of mobile devices is extremely difficult, and there isn’t one standard of interacting with content across developers,” said Jonathan Tann, MacroPort’s vice president of operations. “At the end of the day, consumers didn’t care about any of these things. They just wanted the stuff to work.”
A third offering, dubbed “Mobile Billboard,” uses memory cards-which typically are sold blank-as a marketing vehicle. Media companies and other brands can store advertising messages that automatically play when a card is placed into a device.
The messages can be erased automatically, giving the consumer full access to the card’s memory capabilities. MacroPort can track consumer activity through the cards, which could be subsidized by advertisers.
Although relatively few phones on the market support memory cards, MacroPort is betting that consumers will look to cards to store and transfer content as the wireless data market increases.
“To date, there are about 30 million devices that have memory card slots,” said Tann. “What we’re seeing for numbers next year is that roughly 60 percent of all mobile phones shipped in 2006 will be slot-enabled.”
There are, of course, several technologies that can be used to transfer data between devices. But consumers are loath to use cables to connect platforms, Tann said, and wireless transfer methods are ill-suited for moving data-heavy multimedia files.
“There are very few people synching (phones and PCs), and that’s because it’s really difficult to set up a synch cable through a USB port,” Tann said. “You can do it through Bluetooth, a USB cradle, or over the air, but with larger files-image files, music files, video files-that’s not going to be a reliable transfer mechanism.”
While the company has established relationships with a handful of device manufacturers and content providers, as well as operating system developers Microsoft Corp. and Palm Inc., this week marks MacroPort’s truly public launch. The five-employee startup raised an undisclosed amount in Series A financing in June. RCR
