Red Bend Gives Mobile Service Providers Independence to Manage Software and Apps on Smartphones

BARCELONA, Spain, Feb. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Today at Mobile World Congress, Red Bend Software, the market leader in Mobile Software Management (MSM), announced the industry's first solution for enabling mobile service providers to independently, centrally and consistently manage any type of software and application on smartphones in order to more quickly and cost-effectively deploy new revenue-generating services and features to the installed base. Red Bend's vRapid Mobile® Software Management Client gives service providers control to continuously manage software and apps and to monitor inventory across open OS smartphones, beginning with Android -- letting them deliver their own branded user experience across mobile platforms. (Red Bend is demonstrating the new product this week in Hall 4, Level 3, Suite 50.)

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The rise of smartphones is creating new opportunities for service providers such as mobile operators and handset manufacturers to increase revenues from services like social networking and music and from mobile apps like navigation and games. Smartphones like iPhone, Android, Symbian, WebOS, Blackberry and Windows make up 14.3% of mobile phone shipments globally, and are expected to reach 25.9% of all handsets by 2013, according to IDC. This growing diversity of devices adds management complexity that delays the rollout of new services, increases deployment costs and limits penetration rates.

"Software is now central to the user experience of a device and consumers expect to be able to continuously personalize their phones with new applications and services, not just ringtones and wallpapers. However, with increasing fragmentation within service providers' device portfolios, there is a significant management challenge to deliver a consistent user experience," said Adam Leach, practice leader with Ovum's Devices & Platforms practice. "Standards-based management solutions like Red Bend's vRapid Mobile are important to giving service providers control over managing software in a consistent way across platforms. Service providers that can strategically manage the software assets of mobile devices will be able to generate more revenue from services and applications and increase brand loyalty."

vRapid Mobile Software Management Client is Red Bend's first product designed for service providers and is the latest addition to the company's industry-leading vRapid Mobile suite. Working with Red Bend's Software Management Server, the new product allows service providers to:

• Centrally monitor inventory of applications purchased through app stores or side-loaded, to gain valuable insight into consumer behavior and preferences;
• Deploy branded application packs with a consistent user experience to unlocked handsets;
• Provision new services to existing subscribers without depending on handset replacements cycles;
• Install and lifecycle manage revenue-generating applications; and
• Perform efficient application and OS updates to provide new features and improvements.

vRapid Mobile Software Management Client can be independently downloaded over the air to handsets, or pre-installed in cooperation with the device manufacturer or platform owner. It is the first standards-based solution to manage both built-in and user-downloaded applications and to optimize the size of the application updates to minimize bandwidth and ensure frequent and fast installation. The software:

• Supports the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) Software Component Management Object (SCOMO) and is the only SCOMO client to also manage firmware as a full image or as components;
• Is the first active management client with smart logic to use native platform installers combined with Red Bend's own update agent for compound management tasks involving multiple software types and dependencies;
• Comes with Red Bend's Software Management Server as part of an end-to-end solution, with the flexibility to integrate with any existing OMA DM back-end system; and
• Works with Red Bend's award-winning device management (DM) client, vDirect Mobile™, or any standards-based DM client.

"Mobile operators refuse to be restricted by any one vendor or platform, nearly ensuring the ecosystem's ongoing diversity. This need for independence requires simplified and scalable ways to manage mobile software as smartphones reach the mass market," said Yoram Salinger, CEO of Red Bend Software. "By offering a single point of control to manage software across mobile devices, Red Bend is helping service providers to increase the penetration rate of new services and applications from day one."

vRapid Mobile Software Management Client will be available in Q2 for Android, followed by support for Brew Mobile Platform, LiMo and Symbian. For more information, visit: www.redbend.com.

About Red Bend Software

Red Bend Software, the leader in Mobile Software Management (MSM), provides software solutions for managing firmware, applications and devices over the air. The company's award-winning products enable device manufacturers, mobile operators and software developers to increase revenues, reduce support costs and achieve faster time to market by remotely managing their software assets on mobile devices. Red Bend's software has been deployed in more than 620 million mobile devices by 8 of the top 10 handset manufacturers, including Kyocera, LG Electronics, Motorola, Sharp, Sony Ericsson and ZTE, as well as dozens of other leading companies in the mobile, M2M and WiMAX markets. Unlike device management vendors with proprietary end-to-end systems and manufacturers' internally developed solutions that are platform specific, Red Bend is the only company offering independent client software that is interoperable with any standards-based server and that works with any platform on any type of mobile device. Founded in 1999, Red Bend is a privately held, venture capital-financed company with offices in China, Israel, Japan, Korea, the U.K. and the U.S. Visit: www.redbend.com.

SOURCE Red Bend Software