Tira Wireless is expanding its porting services and stepping onto the crowded playing field of mobile content management.
The company this week plans to unveil the latest version of is flagship product Jump, a software offering designed to port-or customize-applications across the spectrum of handsets and carriers in dozens of languages. The third version of Jump extends support beyond applications to content including ringtones and wallpapers, and is designed to help content owner meet carriers’ pre-deployment demands such as submitting screen shots and marketing descriptions.
The idea, according to Tira Chief Executive Officer Doug Barre, is to fill the “deployment gap” by helping firms bring content to market more quickly and efficiently.
“Most of this is done (today) with what I call hammer-and-chisel tools,” Barre said. “If you look at (video game publisher) Gameloft out of Paris, they have 1,200 (employees) doing this task. They’re not a customer, but if they were, that 1,200 would drop to 200.”
Much of Tira’s business stems from supporting publishers such as the Walt Disney Co., Namco Networks and Warner Bros., who often partner with carriers to offer content through carrier decks. But the company hopes to cash in as carriers become more selective, forcing many providers to approach consumers directly.
“The operators are cutting back the number of content providers, in some cases, they’ll work with,” said Randy Busch, senior vice president of product management and marketing at Tira. “As people go more and more to off-deck kinds of solutions, we think the need to have broader support for development with your content is more and more critical.”
The company earlier this year closed on $13 million in funding and recently expanded Jump to support BREW publishers.
But the company may be facing stiff competition as a handful of software developers fight to help content providers bring their offerings to wireless. Firms such as VeriSign Inc. and Amdocs Ltd. earlier this year each paid hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire developers that support direct-to-consumer mobile content efforts; other players include Wireless Services Corp., Mobile 365 Inc. and Motricity Inc., a Tira partner.
While the expanded offering may be a natural step for Tira, according to Gartner analyst Tole Hart, the company may find itself in competition with some of its allies.
“I don’t think they’re taking away from their core business” of porting, said Hart, “but they could be butting heads” with firms that specialize in managing wireless content.
The rise in off-deck activity may be enough to support numerous players in the long-term, though. Analysts say off-deck purchases now represent as much as one-fourth of all mobile content revenues, marking a threefold increase in market share during the last 18 months.
That trend is expected to continue as more media companies hope to approach wireless users directly through their phones, generating revenues as they build awareness for their brands. And Tira’s customer relationships and experience in porting content for different devices and networks could give it a leg up on the competition, Hart said.
