Funambol Details How "Free" Mobile Apps and Services Can Be Profitable

New White Paper From Leading Mobile Open Source Cloud Sync and Push Email Provider Examines Economics of Freemium Services and Describes Ways to Monetize Free Users


REDWOOD CITY, CA--(Marketwire - March 11, 2010) -

What: New industry white paper: "Using Free-nomics to Avoid Pipe-ification"
Who: Funambol
When: Immediately available
Where: Download with free registration at:
http://www.funambol.com/solutions/library.php

Between thinning margins and demanding consumers who expect more for less, mobile operators are increasingly competing against "free" mobile apps and services.

That competition comes from the likes of Apple, Google, Nokia, Microsoft, Vodafone and other large, deep-pocketed companies that can afford to subsidize free mobile services, such as mobile cloud sync. These mobile services are costly to provide and users are increasingly moving their mobile data to free services, putting carriers in a difficult "dumb pipe" position.

But carriers can fight back and make "free" work for them. In this new white paper, Funambol, a leading provider of open source mobile cloud sync and push email solutions, discusses how free is a harbinger of how mobile services will be priced and packaged for the foreseeable future. The white paper reviews the economics of the "freemium" business model, including:

  • Comparing freemium models of Apple, Google, Nokia, Microsoft, Palm & Vodafone
  • Discussing their approaches to monetization
  • Providing an in-depth financial model for generating revenue from free mobile apps & services

The new report can be instantly downloaded from the Funambol product library at http://www.funambol.com/solutions/library.php with free registration.

About Funambol

Funambol is the leading provider of mobile open source cloud sync and push email for billions of phones. Funambol open source software has been downloaded over three million times by 50,000 developers in 200 countries. The commercial version of Funambol has been deployed by the largest device manufacturers, mobile operators, portals, service providers and ISVs in the world, including AOL, 1&1, EarthLink and CA. Funambol is headquartered in Redwood City, California with R&D in Europe. For more information, please visit http://www.funambol.com. You can also follow Funambol on Twitter at http://twitter.com/funambol.

Contact Information:

Media Contact
Kim Terca for Funambol
Page One PR
+1-415-875-7492