AOL Works with Action Engine, Aricent, Infosys, Obopay, and ShoZu for Open Mobile Platform

LAS VEGAS--(EON:Enhanced Online News)--AOL today announced that five leading application developers – Action Engine, Aricent, Infosys, Obopay, and ShoZu – support the AOL Open Mobile Platform initiative and anticipate delivering a new breed of wireless applications based on the platform. The AOL Open Mobile Platform will provide developers with ready access to the tools and source code they need to build and distribute applications across all major mobile device platforms and operating systems including BREW, Java, Linux, RIM, Symbian, and Windows Mobile.

“Through our new AOL Open Mobile Platform, we’re further demonstrating our focus on the importance of mobile and encouraging developers to create new experiences for users around the globe.”

In addition, to help encourage further innovation and collaboration, AOL also announced that it plans on making the Open Mobile Platform available under the widely-used Apache 2.0 software license.

“Providing developers with open access to our technologies is a fundamental part of AOL’s new product strategy,” said Kevin Conroy, Executive Vice President of AOL. “Through our new AOL Open Mobile Platform, we’re further demonstrating our focus on the importance of mobile and encouraging developers to create new experiences for users around the globe."

“We’re thrilled to see the product innovation that’s being stirred by the AOL Open Mobile Platform,” said Steve Murphy, Senior Vice President of AOL. “We expect that our open platform will unleash even more creativity in the development community and in turn give consumers more choice for mobile applications.”

From media sharing applications to person-to-person mobile money transfer services, Action Engine, Aricent, Infosys, Obopay, and ShoZu are planning to use AOL’s open mobile tools and source code to create innovative applications capable of functioning on a wide-range of devices and operating systems. Examples of the ways the companies plan to use the Open Mobile Platform include:

* Action Engine will work with AOL to offer developers who use AOL’s new platform the opportunity to have their applications embedded within the new AOL MyMobile application. AOL MyMobile, which was released into beta today, is a new interactive suite of AOL services designed specifically for mobile devices and was built using Action Engine’s on-device portal technology.

* Using the AOL Open Mobile Platform, the Aricent News Center application will combine the power of RSS feeds and Web 2.0 technologies to deliver the latest content on virtually any mobile phone. Traditionally, content delivery to phones requires complicated transcoding and server-side formatting to suit various phone display capabilities. However, Aricent News Center, built on top of the AOL Open Mobile Platform, will be presentation-agnostic and will be able to run on any J2ME/BREW mobile device, without custom modification.

* Obopay will use the Open Mobile Platform to continue to extend its leading mobile money transfer services, enabling consumers across all carriers to securely send, request and receive money via their mobile phones.

* ShoZu, the leading provider of mobile social media services, plans to develop an AIM-based application that utilizes Open AIM in addition to the AOL Open Mobile Platform.

The AOL Open Mobile Platform, which is targeted for wider availability to developers this summer, will consist of three components: an XML-based, next-generation markup language; an ultra-lightweight mobile device client; and an application server. A dynamic presentation layer will allow for rapid deployment of new features and easy optimization for a wide variety of mobile devices, allowing developers to build and update applications once, and then distribute them across all supported devices and platforms.

The platform will also give developers the ability to monetize their mobile applications by utilizing advertising resources provided by Platform-A’s Third Screen Media, the leading mobile display advertising network and mobile ad-serving and management platform provider.

More information on the Open Mobile Platform is available at http://dev.aol.com/openmobile.

AOL at CTIA

AOL will be demonstrating its wide array of mobile products in booth #2857 (Hall C4/C5) at CTIA Wireless 2008, taking place in Las Vegas from April 1 through April 3. Products on display during CTIA Wireless include AOL MyMobile, the AOL.com WAP portal, AOL Mobile Search, MapQuest and AIM TXT.

About AOL

AOL is a global Web services company that operates some of the most popular Web destinations, offers a comprehensive suite of free software and services, runs one of the largest Internet access businesses in the U.S., and provides a full set of advertising solutions. A majority-owned subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., AOL LLC and its subsidiaries have operations in the U.S., Europe, Canada and Asia. Learn more at AOL.com.

Supporting Partner Quotes for the AOL Open Mobile Platform

“Through our strategic collaboration with AOL on the AOL MyMobile application and the AOL Open Mobile Platform initiative, AOL and Action Engine are delivering on the promises of openness, ease of use and innovation that consumers are expecting from their mobile applications. This integration offers developers the opportunity to have the applications they create on the AOL Open Mobile Platform widely distributed and gives consumers a diverse catalog of rich mobile applications to select from to personalize their AOL MyMobile experience.”

-- Scott G. Silk, President and CEO, Action Engine Corporation

“Aricent has extensive experience in the design, development, testing and delivery of mobile applications on many platforms. Our initial application development work with the AOL Open Mobile Platform shows that this technology supports very rapid time-to-market capabilities, across a broad range of mobile phones and all major mobile operating systems. Aricent is excited to be working in collaboration with AOL to enhance the communications software capabilities of the AOL Open Mobile Platform.”

-- Deepak Mehrotra, Vice President, Communication Applications and Terminal Software, Aricent

“The AOL Open Mobile Platform is a good step in the right direction towards creation of portable mobile applications that, written once, can run on virtually any device that the AOL Open Mobile Platform supports. The platform is a much needed framework with an aggregation of tools and source code to build and distribute mobile applications across a variety of mobile devices, OS platforms and browsers. Infosys as a premier mobile device and solutions engineering service firm welcomes this development and looks forward to leveraging the platform.”

-- Ram Kumar, Associate Vice President of Product Engineering Business, Infosys Technologies Ltd.

“We really look forward to working with the AOL teams to further integrate our Obopay mobile person-to-person money transfer services within an expanding suite of AOL properties. The AOL Open Mobile Platform will provide a great framework to deliver an engaging and updatable mobile user interface within Mobile AIM to securely send, receive and request money from hundreds of millions of different mobile devices across a wide range of carrier networks. It also allows us to focus on rapid deployment of Obopay money transfer services across a wide range of mobile device platforms and deliver an experience that consumers can easily access from almost any mobile phone.”

-- Christian Delay, Vice President, Business Development, Obopay

“AOL’s Open Mobile initiative is good for the industry and for consumers. Open systems win. ShoZu intends to support AOL’s Open Mobile Platform in future services, and at CTIA we are demonstrating an early AIM integration using AOL’s Open AIM platform. ShoZu is about connecting mobile users with their online social lives and IM was a natural next step. AOL’s appealing new strategy makes them a great choice to work with as our first instant messaging partner.”

-- Mark Bole, Chief Executive Officer, ShoZu

View All Releases from This Organization