iSkoot raises $19M to Develop Web Service Platform
By Azam on November 7, 2008 
iSkoot the company known for ability to make skype calls from a mobile phone has raised $19M in a third round of venture capital. The company has large ambitions to deliver a platform to enable services to carriers to offer third party applications. VentureBeat reports iSkoot intend to build an ambitious mobile platform for AT&T. iSkoot has built a model around technology that works with carriers in a non competitive or threatening manner. In fact, iSkoot plans to offer service that will increase revenues for carriers by accessing the web services onto the mobile device bringing more value add services for mobile subscribers.
iSkoot is best known to as the company that first brought Skype to the Andrioid G1 phone. The company has been working with carriers like 3 brand from Hutch to offer Skype VOIP service on mobile device. The company currently works with the carrier Hutch in eight countries. Also, the company has sold 300,000 mobile handsets that include the iSkoot software and service in Europe and Asia.
The Technology
iSkoot technology is based on a thin client software that connects to the company’s own infrastructure and avoids loading the carriers network with unwanted data traffic. At the same, the carrier is able to recover minutes over voice channel for the local call that converts into an internet call via the exchange. Other VoIP services effectively let users circumvent carriers’ voice channel by going directly to the Internet cloud.
Carrier Friendly
iSkoot makes a normal voice call to their servers, and then transmits the Skype data over the Internet to the exchange giving the user clearer and greater call experience. The carrier also benefits by user traffic and valuable minutes consumed.
Social.im acquisition
The acquisition of social.im will benefit the company in ability to integrate technology to offer web services to mobile subscriber. In a similar fashion, iSkoot was able to integrate the Skype software client onto the mobile devices and able to provide the service without taxing the hardware device, and iSkoot plans to offer similar web services applications through social.im technology that allows users to access contacts on facebook, twitter, or similar social networking web apps. Social.im brings the immediacy of instant communications on web applications to mobile subscribers.
VentureBeat on iSkoot working with AT&T
iSkoot gets $19M warchest to launch Web services platform for AT&T
Mark Jacobstein, chief executive of San Francisco’s iSkoot, while not commenting specifically on AT&T (we found out about it separately; the AT&T part is still under wraps) said such services are a natural extension of iSkoot’s technology.
The platform, to launch in testing Nov. 14, will let the giant operator offer an array of Web services to users of its low-end phones — the majority of its phones, which don’t have the iPhone’s powerful features. The services will include things like social networking, email, RSS feeds and eventually services like Twitter.
What is attractive to ATT, however, is that iSkoot has managed to integrate the Skype application deeply into the phone software “stack” — namely in the form so-called “Skype phones,” where your Skype contacts are integrated right into your address book for example. If it can do that for Skype, it can do that for a range of other Web services — theoretically everything from Twitter to Facebook.
Jacobstein sees the SocialIM technology as a sort of “PointCast 2.0,” a reference to a failed company and earlier poster child of the future of the Internet designed to push data of interest to the desktop. The company was ahead of the times and lacked the demand that the web 2.0 model is based on such technology as RSS. The technology needed to move data between the desktop and the phone, he says, is just as important as the technology that moves data from the Web to the phone.
AT&T is playing smart in investing in iSkoot to add valuable web services to the mobile device for subscribers. AT&T has already benefited with exclusive deal Appple iPhone, and will likely be able to steal more subscribers will increasingly more valuable web applications available on iPhone and other AT&T phone device offerings.
If the iPhone and Google Android phones are bringing cool web services to users of iPhones, iSkoot sees itself as the way for carriers to bring services to low-end phones. There are few competitors offering software with such deep integration. Most of them are other messaging companies, such as Oz (Nokia), Comverse, Visto, and Seven
iSkoot investors include Vision Opportunity Master Fund, which led the round, and existing investors Charles River Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Jesselson Capital Corporation and ZG Ventures. The company has raised a total $32M in funding.
Reading List
VentureBeat iSkoot gets $19M warchest to launch Web services platform for AT&T
TechCrunch Downturn-Busting Venture Round For iSkoot: $19 Million
Categories : Tech, WirelessTags : Andrioid, ATT, Charles River Ventures, Facebook, iSkoot, Jesselson Capital Corporation, Khosla Ventures, Mark Jacobstein, Skype, social.im, twitter, Vision Opportunity Master Fund, VOIP, ZG Ventures