Rococo

We're users of the Zyb platform/service here at Rococo, and so we were tickled to see it make an acquisition which brought some Bluetooth location-awareness into the fold. Zyb has bought Imity, for an undisclosed amount. The key driver seems to have been to stitch the location-based awareness (aka Pocket Radar) that Imity had implemented in to the Zyb offering.

This usage scenario for Bluetooth (where Bluetooth's location-ness is connected to one or more social networks to tell you something about other people nearby) is now becoming very common, and I'd expect to see it as a standard element of any decent mobile social networking offering within 6-12 months. Imity also brings some very cool crowd-sensing stuff to the party (see their blog for examples).

Good news - we look forward to trying out the newly integrated service when it's been "Zyb'd" and wish everyone involved all the best.

Posted by Sean at 03:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Belated congratulations to our colleagues in Open Interface North America, who have been (quietly) acquired by Qualcomm.

OINA make of the the great Bluetooth Stacks, and have seen some killer product wins for their solution, especially around Audio, in the last few years. Eagle eyed readers of the legal notices on the iPhone will have spotted that it's their stack in there.

We've met a good few of the OINA people over the years, and they're a pleasure to do business with. They're even more of a pleasure to have a pint with :-)

Anyway - congrats to all. Looks like a great fit. We look forward to seeing your stack turn up in many new places and products.

Now if only Qualcomm had a JSR82 solution .... :-)

Posted by Sean at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

CSR released their Q3 results a few days ago. As per last time, they make for interesting reading. Some highlights:

- Attach rates for Bluetooth in handsets heading somewhere between 40-50% in 2007
- CSR market share in headsets is still 80% and expected to remain that way in 2008. Wow.
- Pull-through rate for headsets (as in the percentage of phones that cause a headset to be sold) is 20% and rising
- Design wins for HiFi with Sony and Philips
- Slightly worrying increase in inventory - but not too worrying

All in all - pretty compelling stuff. With their push to ensure they have non-cellular (phone) sources of revenue, plus their move to non-Bluetooth areas (GPS, WiFi), plus their continued leadership within Bluetooth (Ultra Low Power, UWB, etc), they're being very smart about spreading their sources of revenue and seeding new growth segments in the market.

They're also some of the best technical speakers at conferences that you'll ever hear, period :-)

Anyway - stock price is (imho, deservedly) on the up as a result:

Posted by Sean at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Always good to see a partner doing well. Esmertec have bagged Lenovo as a new customer for their Jbed Virtual Machine. Seems the VM is going to be built-in to the new Victory line of mobile phones from Lenovo. And in China, any phone with any market share at all means millions in volume. Good for Esmertec.

Posted by Sean at 04:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rococo and O2 Ireland worked together to put Rococo's mobile sales software solution into action for United Beverages, the largest wholesale drinks distributor in Ireland. United Beverages uses the software solution to deliver real-time sales and customer information to travelling sales representatives. Find out more about how United Beverages is improving business efficiency with Rococo's mobility solution. www.rococosoft.com

Posted by Sean at 06:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)