Fabrizio Giordano

According to a form D filed with the SEC this afternoon, open source cloud-sync company Funambol has raised $3 million in funding from previous investors HIG Ventures, Pacven Walden Ventures and Nexit Infocom.

Funambol works to sync a number of cross-platform devices, such as laptops, smartphones and tablets over the internet and connect them to your heavily used websites and systems. The company refers to itself as, “like iCloud for all mobile phones and connected devices.” Originally, its goal was to sync information solely with mobile devices. It also introduced a mobile messaging app in 2008.

Customers of Funambol include telecom giant Alcatel-Lucent, cloud server provider Rackspace, Sprint and Samsung. In July, AlwaysOn selected the company as an OnMobile Top 100 winner.

HIG Ventures and Walden International, the parent firm of Pacven Walden Ventures, injected $12.5 million into the company in 2008.

Filed under: cloud, deals

The top cellular carriers in the United States do not often play nice with each other. Yet, when there is a common enemy on the horizon, even the fiercest of rivals will band together to keep from being pushed aside. That is apparently what AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon are doing by jointly investing $100 million in Isis, an NFC mobile payment solution set to battle Google’s Wallet project.

According to Bloomberg, the carriers may invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the NFC solution to battle Google Wallet. Mobile payments may be a $670 billion industry by 2015, making the early moves by all the players extremely important.

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First Step: NFC Chips

NFC chips are beginning to become ubiquitous in new smartphones and it is a matter of time before consumer behavior starts to change when it comes to day-to-day payment options. NFC payments is currently on top of Gartner’s “Hype Circle” which means that it is between two and five years from maturing into commercially viable technology. Given the pace of mobile innovation and the vigor of the carriers (as seen with this new large investment in Isis), it is probably best to bet on the short end of that development cycle.

There are other large companies with a vested interest in how NFC is developed. Google and the carriers are the primary drivers but the credit card companies also have a major stake. Visa, which has invested in mobile card reader Square, is investing in NFC terminals for merchants outside of what the other players are doing, according to Bloomberg.

Sprint & Google Need to Come to The Herd

Sprint is on the outside of the Isis co-operative. Hence, when Google announced its NFC plans in May, Sprint was the carrier of choice for the Wallet project. Sprint plans on rolling out its NFC and the Google payments option to its smartphones later this year, rolling out ahead of ISIS, which plans on releasing its NFC option in mid-2012.

Google Wallet and Isis are probably the future of the daily deals industry as well. Sprint, Isis and Google (through its Offers program) plan on using mobile wallets to push coupons to consumers while taking a cut of the sales.

Isis probably has the upper hand over Google and Sprint. It has the cooperation of all the major payment operators and a large existing customer infrastructure. Google’s partners include Sprint, CitiBank and MasterCard. Those are important players, but Google and Sprint should consider joining Isis for the good of the ecosystem, which is in danger of becoming extremely fragmented.

One Reader to Rule Them All

What it will all come down to is the ubiquity and simplicity of NFC card readers. If a player (like Visa or one of the large financial management companies) creates a NFC reader that will be carrier, device and service agnostic, then all players can survive and compete together. Yet, most merchants will not put in multiple payment readers.

Therefore, for NFC to truly take off as a payment option, a compromise will need to be reached. That is not outside the realm of possibility as Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile show us with their investment in Isis.

Discuss

After a steady stream of information in June, all has been quiet on the Facebook Project Spartan front in recent weeks. Originally, at least some thought the plan was to unveil Spartan in July — but that obviously came and went. It’s certainly possible we won’t hear anything until f8 in late September now. But one new bit of information has come to our attention that could be related. Say hello to BoltJS.

BoltJS is a UI framework that’s being built by Facebook for the purpose “helping developers build fantastic mobile web applications in HTML5 and Javascript,” as you can read for yourself here. It is written entirely in JavaScript and runs in the browser, meaning no backend processing is required. And guess where the focus of the project lies right now: mobile WebKit browsers — just like Project Spartan.

Here’s the description in developer Shane O’Sullivan’s own words from the project’s GitHub page:

BoltJS is a UI framework designed by Facebook to be compact, fast and powerful. It is written entirely in JavaScript and runs in the browser, needing no server backend. While BoltJS can be used in a progressive enhancement approach, it is primarily designed for UIs that are built mostly, if not completely, in the browser.

While it is the aim of the BoltJS project to support as many modern browsers as sensible, it is currently focused on supporting mobile WebKit browsers, with the intention of being the best possible development platform for mobile sites and HTML5 apps.

O’Sullivan is a software engineer at Facebook on the Client UI team. The other authors of the project are Will Bailey, Vlad Kolesnikov, and Tom Occhino.

BoltJS is built on top of Javelin, and plays nicely with Facebook’s current code, O’Sullivan notes. It also features modules that use the CommonJS standard. For all the other technical details, check out the GitHub docs page.

But here are a few other interesting things about the project. First, Facebook doesn’t seem to want to say a word about it. I asked them about it several hours ago after a back and forth about something else. So far, nada in response to this. That’s not surprising given what I’ve been told about BoltJS — namely that it’s still meant to be a secret.

While the documentation does reside on GitHub, the source code hasn’t been released to the public yet. The links on this page to the zip and tar source files don’t work. But I’m told that BoltJS is already being licensed secretly to third parties who are preparing apps to show off using the platform. At least one of those third parties is a major player in the consumer web space. Again, this sounds a lot like Spartan.

Also found on GitHub is a demo app built using BoltJS called “Weather App“. If it looks familiar, it’s because you own an iPhone. It is essentially the Weather app re-created using the JavaScript framework. Still think Facebook doesn’t intend to battle with Apple in mobile down the road?…

That’s all for now. More as we get it.

When HP decided to kill off webOS, most people were more concerned with who would snatch up the PC business that went tumbling down the trash chute alongside it. A few options were thrown out, but most bets were placed on Samsung, who’s reportedly been looking to outsource some notebook orders. Little did we know, Samsung may be interested in grabbing webOS, too.

DigiTimes’ sources report that Samsung may very well be considering the purchase of webOS to better compete against Apple and other Android phone makers. With Google’s proposed acquisition of Motorola, the game has changed significantly.

IP wars have become a bit of trend lately within the mobile industry, and no one is completely safe. However, Android now has a much better position thanks to Motorola’s massive patent trove. HP made a similar move last year with its $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm and its patent portfolio. If Samsung really does end up buying webOS, it may buy itself some desperately needed protection, as well. Which would be quite the boost since the South Korea-based company has been under a full-scale attack from Apple for the past four months. Plus, a webOS acquisition may give Samsung an edge competitively, as well.

Though Google promises to leave Android “open,” Motorola will undoubtedly have the upper hand in terms of Android devices. That said, many Android partners are likely feeling a bit frazzled, and may be looking for their own way to comfortably differentiate. Android’s certainly a success story compared to webOS, but it’s also up for grabs and Motorola will henceforth get first dibs. That’s rather uncomfortable to just about anyone but Motorola.

Apple has iOS. HTC has its massive supply chain. Nokia will have Windows Phone 7 Mango. And Motorola will, of course, have Android. That leaves Samsung, who is a notably strong competitor among these big five device makers, without something special to set it apart.

While webOS hasn’t been a shining star among mobile platforms, that’s not to say that it’s a bad operating system. Quite the opposite actually. webOS partners the beauty and simplicity of iOS with the multi-tasking of Android, but just doesn’t have enough apps to walk the walk. With a little tweaking and some app support, webOS might just be what Samsung needs. Especially if the South Korea-based company is looking to free itself from the litigation-inducing Android.

In other news, HP’s ex-VP of Marketing for the Personal Systems Group has reportedly been recruited by Samsung to take over PC sales, adding weight to rumors that Samsung is interested in HP’s soon-to-be spun off PC business. Samsung has denied, rather vehemently, any intention of picking up HP’s PC business. We agree it wouldn’t be the best fit, since HP’s lower-margin PC business doesn’t really jive with Samsung’s high-margin panel and DRAM businesses.

Here’s Samsung’s statement on the matter:

To put to rest any speculation on this issue, I would like to definitively state that Samsung Electronics will not acquire Hewlett-Packard’s PC Business. Hewlett-Packard is the global leader in the PC business with sales of 40 million units last year, while Samsung is an emerging player in the category and sold about 10 million units in 2010. Based on the significant disparity in scale with Samsung’s own PC business and the complete lack of synergies, it would be both infeasible and imprudent to even consider such an acquisition.