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Apr. 12, 2008

Overall, the ODP (on-device portal) industry is growing by leaps and bound.

ODP is a way to describe various vendors’ attempts to leverage the handset’s capabilities in delivering a more compelling user experience and increase content adoption.

Matt Lewis, research director at AR-Chart says “it’s clearly a defined market. The expectation is a lot of content will be consumed over an ODP interface, which requires the direct involvement of carriers to reach any significant volumes.

Key global players in ODP include Abaxia, Adobe, Cibenix and SurfKitchen. But Bellevue, Wash.-based Action Engine lays claim to being the oldest ODP player.

It was founded eight years ago, and while it has taken several different iterations over the years, it finally is coming into its own.

Alltel Wireless grabbed a lot of attention last year when it started deploying Celltop, enabled by Qualcomm’s Suite One technology.

Celltop features “cells” that come pre-installed on handsets and represent various categories to help users quickly navigate to their weather, news, stocks or other applications.

More recently, Cincinnati Bell announced it is using software from SurfKitchen to enhance data discovery and delivery with its MyPhone portal.

Silk gives a lot of credit to the Action Engine team for aligning the company’s products with buyers’ requirements.

The company is now launching MAX, its Mobile Advertising Xtension platform. With MAX, the company is opening up its in-application ad-serving capabilities beyond the applications it builds, making it easier for third-party developers to ad-enable their applications and for operators to put ads on offline device screens, company executives say.

Things are also cooking at SurfKitchen, with Cincinnati Bell as its first North American wireless carrier customer. Eric Schimpf, general manager of Consumer Wireless for Cincinnati Bell, says SurfKitchen’s experience in markets outside the United States helped Cincinnati Bell, a GSM carrier, gear up for its MyPhone deployment.

Orange Group, Telefonica Moviles Espana, Telstra, Maxis, Etisalat and Saudi Telecom are among SurfKitchen’s customers.

Like other regional carriers, Cincinnati Bell can’t place orders for millions of customized handsets. But the on-device portal allows the carrier to personalize phones and give devices the same-looking interface regardless of the manufacturer.

The MyPhone portal first will launch on about four handsets that meet certain requirements, such as memory size, but expand after that.

Overall, Action Engine has deals with top media brands but also has seen a good number of RFPs coming from the carrier community of late.

Three years ago, Action Engine says it pioneered the technology for inserting, caching, rotating and tracking mobile ads within offline mobile application screens.

It has launched ad-enabled applications for brands such as The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated.com, MSNBC.com and Golf.com.

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Source: AR-Chart.