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PhoneTopp Unveils Desktop Conferencing for Your Smartphone
– Only Better

Enterprise collaboration survey results showcase strong user interest in mobile web conferencing solution

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Mountain View, CA – November 12, 2008 – At DealMaker Media’s Under The Radar Conference today, PhoneTopp outlined its vision to deliver adhoc mobile collaboration to every smartphone user, unveiling a cloud‐based, thinclient architecture bringing a superior mobile collaboration experience that includes the ability to do web, audio and video conferencing from your smartphone with simple one‐click participation. Tom Barsi, CEO of PhoneTopp, is presenting at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus during the “Business Applications” session at 10:45 a.m.

With its dedicated mobile platform, PhoneTopp will enable productivity improvements for the enterprise by delivering the essential collaboration services required to immediately connect people and information seamlessly from their smartphone. When commercially launched, PhoneTopp will first allow users to host or participate in a web meeting directly from their smartphone, through a simple click‐to‐collaborate approach that includes the
ability to:

  • accept an invitation via text message to join a web conference
  • answer a phone call that launches an application to participate in the meeting, with no phone numbers or passwords to remember
  • navigate and zoom natively with integrated tools, including a PhoneTopp‐developed “mobile rewind” capability that allows users to independently go back within the presentation if they missed a slide

Gartner estimates the web/audio collaboration market to be $5 billion today. In 2010, Gartner estimates web conferencing will be available to 75 percent of corporate users as standard facility alongside email, presence and calendaring. “The collaboration market is on the cusp of delivering one of the largest productivity gains the virtual worker has seen in years,” said Tom Barsi, CEO of PhoneTopp. “Mobile collaboration services will fuel this productivity growth, allowing work to get done with unprecedented speed and flexibility – from anywhere.”

An enterprise collaboration survey recently conducted by PhoneTopp via a web survey tool and deployed to over 15,000 Microsoft, WebEx, Adobe and Citrix customers revealed:

  • over 62 percent of respondents desired or strongly desired to participate in a web conference from their
    smartphone
  • over 57 percent of respondents participated in a web conference at least once a week

“Until now, only persons at their computer in a pre‐arranged meeting could participate in a web conference. Holding back expansion of web conferencing is tying the user to the desk,” continued Barsi. “The proliferation of smart phones capable of running web conferencing allows PhoneTopp to lead an opportunity that will dramatically change business communication – enabling true ‘adhoc’ mobile collaboration.”

The PhoneTopp Technology

The system software runs a thin client‐computing model, hosted by PhoneTopp on the Amazon EC2 cloud. The architecture off‐loads computer intensive tasks to the datacenter, saving on power dissipation and network traffic. PhoneTopp’s patent work around adaptive virtualization protocol (PAV) reduces “over the air” latency to an estimated 5 seconds. The protocol takes on the difficult task of managing multiple streams to the smartphone while dynamically adapting and optimizing how the content gets pushed based on the available bandwidth.

Developers are learning the difficult truth; applications written for the desktop browser cannot be effectively downsized for the smartphone. Understanding this dynamic and taking an entirely new approach, PhoneTopp solves three critical barriers to delivering a truly viable suite of automated services for mobile meeting coordination and collaboration:

  • PhoneTopp makes it simple to join a meeting – simpler, in fact, than desktop solutions available on the market today
  • PhoneTopp’s patent work in mobile optimization makes it a super fast and uninterrupted experience
  • PhoneTopp delivers a native smartphone client, optimized for your mobile device screen that includes user screen management functions to make navigating content not only possible, but pleasurable, on the single small screen

Availability and Pricing

PhoneTopp currently has alpha product available and will be releasing a public beta in Q1 2009. The company plans to charge subscriptions fees, currently estimated at $8 per month.

PhoneTopp’s market entry strategy is to embrace and extend the leading web meeting services and partner with service providers to offer a branded, premium mobile service with a compelling revenue model that reduces churn and creates a powerful mobile collaboration offering for their customers.

From now through the end of 2008, PhoneTopp is encouraging early beta sign‐ups with an incentive of three months free service when launched. Interested parties should go to www.phonetopp.com and input their email address for follow‐up.

About PhoneTopp

The PhoneTopp team comprises vetran innovators and business leaders from companies such as ConSentry Networks, VINA Technologies and Aruba Networks. It also maintains an advisory board that includes former senior executives from industry leaders in web collaboration.

PhoneTopp was founded in March 2008 and is headquartered in San Jose, California. The company is seed‐funded and currently looking to obtain a Series A round of financing.

 

PhoneTopp media contact:
Kim@storyboardpr.com
Phone: 415.516.5863