Posts Tagged ‘fring’

mjelly.com mobile 2.0 service of the week - signing off with a retrospective

Friday, March 20th, 2009

Hello Hello what’s going on? what’s all this shouting?

James from mjelly here at Mobile Industry Review.

Sadly, this is the last chance for me to do a Mobile 2.0 Service of the Week post on this blog. Good luck to Ewan with the new business model and a massive thanks to him for letting me write this every week - max respects.  Thanks also to Krystal for uploading my early posts.   All is not lost - we’ll be continuing the series over at http://blog.mjelly.com

It was tough trying to decide which mobile site or app to cover for the last mobile 2.0 service of the week - Opera Mini has the most ratings on mjelly of all the downloadable apps, and mjoy is top on the mobile sites front.  So, rather than try and pick one I’m going to list all of the services we have covered over the last few months in case you missed any - listed by category - here it goes:

Communities

Mobamingle - the international version of Mobile Game Town - a Japanese mobile services with $200m in annual revenues

Peperonity - the original mobile 2.0 service and one of the biggest drivers of inventory on admob

Heysan - cool Silicon Valley mobile startup building a nice line in mobile virtual goods

Mocospace - US mobile social network with massive traction and generating big ad revenues

Flirtomatic - the world’s leading mobile dating site and top UK mobile startups

Mxit - South Africa’s massive mobile social networking platform

Media and content

Mippin - the world’s leading mobile news and web service - based in London UK

Cellufun - mobile games community

Search

Taptu - Cambridge-based mobile-focused search engine taking on Google

abphone - the French mobile vertical search engine

Browsers

UCWEB - the Chinese mobile browser that’s been downloaded 60m times

Communications and messaging

Dabr - the no.1 mobile twitter interface

ebuddy - mobile IM service downloaded 11m times

Nimbuzz - unified communication across Skype and IM

Mig33 - mobile voip and messaging app

Trutap - fantastic IM and content app that was unlucky with their investors

Fring - momo award winning VoiP and communications app

Not a bad list really - who would have imagined all of these new services even a few years ago when all mobile had going on was ringtone scams and a load of hype about “mobile TV”?

You can find all these mobile 2.0 services on mjelly which is a directory of mobile sites and free mobile software

Thanks again to Ewan and all at MIR :-)

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Posted in Applications | Comments

Fring - MWC Mobile Monday Peer Awards Winner

Friday, February 20th, 2009

Hello James from the mjelly mobile 2.0 blog here at Mobile Industry Review with another Mobile 2.0 Service of the Week.  Fring is an amazing bit of mobile software that I’ve been using for a while and always planned to cover as one of our featured apps.  Earlier this week, (Monday) it was announced that Fring had won the Mobile Monday Peer Awards in the ”emerging startups” category.  

So - what better time to take a look at what they are building…

Fring

What is it?

Fring is a mobile VoIP and communications client available on iphone, Symbian, Java and Windows Mobile.  Fring users can make free calls to each other over the system.  The app also integrates with a range of third party VoIP and communications services including Skype, GoogleTalk, MSN Messenger and Twitter.   Recently they have also begun to add other services such as Last.fm to the mix.  Fring also lets you access all your contacts/ buddies from a single list. 

Fring is doing pretty nicely in terms of traction with 400,000 new downloads and activations per month. 

The company is based in Israel and has raised $13m + in funding over three rounds from Pitango Venture Capital, Veritas Venture Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, VenFin

Fring

Why is it interesting?

Fring is trying to do something really big i.e. become the “Skype of Mobile”.   This is a tough thing to do as they are running up against the operators on one side and the competition on the other.  For example, Nimbuzz and Mig33 both combine VoIP, messaging and mobile. 

One thing I like about Fring is that it has been clever about developing mobile viral marketing approaches to help spread the word about its service.  For example, when a user logs in to an instant messaging service like gtalk using Fring their status is changed to include the Fring URL - clever…

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Another interesting thing about Fring is how passionate its users are which Fring has done a lot to promote and capture - for example they have a very lively discussion forum on their site and a nice blog which keeps people up to date on the service.   Fring is really a very good example of best practice in this area.

fring4

So - well done Fring for winning the award - looking forward to seeing what they come up with next…

That’s it from me - see you next week for another Mobile 2.0 Service of the Week.

You can download Fring on mjelly, which is a directory of free mobile applications and other stuff for your phone at mjelly.com (PC) and m.mjelly.com (mobile)

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Posted in Applications, Mobile, Mobile Applications, mobile world congress | Comments

Skype: Am I missing something?

Monday, January 5th, 2009

logo_skype

I am currently reviwing the INQ 1,  and it has a inbuilt Skype client which is heavily promoted in its advertising and some would even say the INQ 1 is simply the Skype Phone version 3.

I have 2 Skype contacts, that’s it! Who actually uses Skype?? This really hit home when reading a post by Jonthan Jensen.

Teenagers don’t seem to be big Skype users so this application didn’t engender as much interest, although adults did show some interest in it.

He is exactly right but its more then teenagers I would say anyone under the age of 25  is probably not a Skype user.  Is it because that Skype is mainly used to contact people abroad?  The only time I haves used Skype, was when one of my friends took a semester in the Czech Republic, this was the easiest way for us all to stay in contact with her for free!

Now I move on to Skype on your Mobile, who uses it?? Hold your hands up now! I am completely at a loss why you would need Skype on your phone??

Am I missing something?

I understand about VOIP, and I think services such as Sipgate are fantastic when on your Home PC, but on your mobile I think they are a complete waste of time. For example if I really wanted to I could use a service like Fring and be able to receive calls on my Sipgate local number on my mobile.  The only I think this would actually be *useful* is when abroad on my holiday and in Wi-Fi coverage!

Maybe I am wrong and Skype is a fantastic resource, for me I think it a waste of time.

I do look forward to reading your comments about Skype!

Ricky

ricky@mobileindustryreview.com

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Posted in Opinion | Comments

Fring opens up for developers

Friday, June 20th, 2008

Good news for fans of Fring: the mobile VoIP company has released its APIs, meaning developers out there can build whatever web apps to interact with the Fring client, and take advantage of all the usual Fring functionality: presence, talk, chat, file transfer, auto-roaming and all the rest.

Opening up APIs is usually one of the smartest moves a software company can make: all sorts of creative people come up with all sorts of creative apps that get more people using your service, and you sit back and soak up the glory and extra users.

Alas, the APIs are only available for the fring client on the Symbian S60 9.2 at the moment, although Fring’s promising more platforms are on the way before too long.

Here’s Fring’s Roy and Sagi talking about the new APIs:

More information over at the developer site.

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Posted in VOIP | Comments

Fring brings VoIP app to Apple iPhone

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

VoIP company Fring has unveiled what it claims is the first true VoIP application for Apple’s iPhone. Granted, there are other VoIP apps out there, but Fring is a VoIP and IM combo. While it’s currently just in beta version, iPhone users can download it from Fring’s website and give the company feedback on how the application is going.

Fring promises all the usual call and chat functionality you’d expect from VoIP, and it integrates with a whole host of other services, including Skype, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, Twitter, Yahoo! & AIM, with a single contacts list.

I can’t imagine the likes of Apple being happy about this - the iPhone needs to please its ‘carrier partners’, and most operators haven’t been exactly ready to embrace VoIP just yet. Others have suggested that Apple might be working on its own VoIP app, and therefore unlikely to embrace the budding competition. Either way, Apple has shown when it released updates that bricked jailbroken iPhones, it’s not shy of taking drastic action when iPhone users are doing things with the device it doesn’t like - and that doesn’t bode well for VoIP.

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Posted in iPhone | Comments

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