In 2010, Israel’s Internet sector came of age, mobile hit its stride, more capital began to flow into Israel, and several companies grew. Here is a video recap of some of the biggest headlines and stories from 2010.
Happy 2011!
Browsing Posts in Mobile Web
If you ever wonder what the most important networking website in Israel is for Israeli startups, it seems that Meetup.com might have more impact on a company’s success than LinkedIn or Facebook. Or at least in the initial stages of forming the startup. Without Meetup.com – which helps groups of people with common interests plan meetings - there might not be as many startups in Israel as there are right now and they might not be as successful or as promising as they are without the networking and fundraising opportunities that the different groups that have popped up on Meetup.com in recent years have offered them.
Almost certainly there wouldn’t have been the unique opportunity to create a networking group focused on encouraging and empowering female entrepreneurs and aspiring female entrepreneurs in Israel to succeed. There also almost certainly wouldn’t have been a new annual event that allows some of the most promising startups founded by females to present to a room full of venture capitalists and angel investors and to meet with them afterwards. Thanks to Meetup.com though, there’s Yazamiyot. And all this and more has become possible.
A year after Gemini Israel Funds Associate Einat Metzer started the group, Yazamiyot – which is the Hebrew plural for “female entrepreneurs” – has over 200 members and holds monthly meetups and additional activities to inspire female entrepreneurs, help them grow as business people, and give them opportunities such as today’s FundHer competition.
Ilana Jucha of Stat-Market
At least fifteen startups founded by women were in attendance at the event and five of them -Flakkes, Yubitech, Stat-Market, microSteps, and Brandsforce – presented. Aside from Yazamiyot members, the audience was primarily made up of investors who had the ability at the end of the presentations to vote for which company they liked the most.
The winner, microSteps is an educational technology company that currently provides the private school market, specifically preschools, with a web portal that manages all of the school’s communications it has with parents. One use of the portal is removing the need the need for those notes that used to be sent home with kids only to be thrown out without reading after they got crushed in the kids’ backpacks. Founded by Elanit Halevi-Yariv and Yael Goshen in 2007, the company currently has a presence in Atlanta and New York and over 50,000 registered users in 28 states across the US.
Here is a demo of microSteps solution:
The runners-up of the competition were Yubitech and Brandsforce. Founded in 2009 by Danny Weissberg and Nili Shohet, Yubitech mobilizes any enterprise application into an application that can run on any smart-phone in just a matter of days. Brandsforce, founded by Nili Goldberg-Levi, offers marketers and advertisers a social media recruitment solution that identifies relevant opinion leaders and recruits them to help promote a company’s brand and enhance brand engagement on social networks.
Here is a video of YubiTech’s solution:
Stat-Market was founded by Ilana Jucha and offers real-time analytical software that can predict customer behavior and help maximize customers’ lifetime value (LTV). Founded by Ruth Polachek in 2008, Flakkes bridges the gap between users and advertisers by enabling users to provide direct feedback on what they think of a company’s online ads. See the video below.
Related posts:
9 Israel-Based Female Tech Entrepreneurs on Twitter
Business Strategy, Israeli female entrepreneurs and Facebook IPO rumors
What is keeping women out of technology in Israel?
Motorola's Droid X uses iSkoot's Kalaida™ Platform and Qualcomm's Snapdragon mobile processor
Qualcomm announced earlier today that it has acquired Israel’s iSkoot, a leader in “mobilizing internet services on the handsets most people use today”, for an undisclosed sum (rumored to be between $50-100 million).
iSkoot’s Kalaida™ Platform utilizes cloud computing to enable device manufacturers and mobile operators to bring popular social networks and new internet services to mobile handsets in a way that minimally impacts network and handset performance.
As part of Qualcomm Innovation Center, a Qualcomm subsidiary, iSkoot will focus on three areas: continued support of its current customers; integrating its offerings with Qualcomm’s products; ,and developing open source data management contributions for mobile devices.
With the growing popularity of smartphones and tablets, such as the iPad (the fastest-selling gadget of all time), the demand for such a service is huge and will continue to be with the release of new mobile devices and the launch of 4G networks in the U.S. and elsewhere. Qualcomm’s purchase of iSkoot indicates several things about the telecommunications industry and Israel:
- Considering the fast pace at which development in the mobile industry is moving right now and that the 4G space is still open to newcomers, several key players in mobile hardware and software, such as AT&T and Intel, have looked to Israel over the past few months to help them try to gain an edge.
- The acquisition is the latest in a string of Israeli startups getting acquired by major companies, including Google, AOL and Dell, this year. What impact these acquisitions will have on the growth of Israeli startups in the future is to be seen, though it currently doesn’t look good. Whatever the impact it has on Israel’s startup culture, it seems that considering this sale and the opening of new innovation centers here, the heart of the future of 4G and mobile communications is slowly becoming centered in Israel.
- According to Globes, iSkoot is the first Israeli company that Qualcomm, “the world’s largest supplier of mobile telephone processors and owner of the intellectual property for the CDMA protocol” has bought, though it has had a development center in Haifa since the mid-1990s. Given that AT&T, Qualcomm and Intel all have R&D centers in Israel, will Verizon look to Israel next?
Here’s a video of iSkoot’s Social Net app in action:
Image via yonghokim.
Related stories:
AT&T introduces “speed-dating” for app developers in US and Israel
Inside Israeli Tech: AT&T in Israel and 9 More Headlines
In 2011 Verizon Wireless will start carrying the iPhone adding another level of competition in the iPhone-Android wars.
AT&T announced on Thursday that it is opening three innovation centers, including one that will be in Israel.
The move will give mobile application developers the chance to present their app ideas and develop them at these labs and then to get them out to market fast. Through a fast (“speed-dating”) approach, AT&T hopes to review up to 400 proposals a year.
The company plans to work with Alcatel-Lucent, Amdocs and Ericsson, to locate innovation centers in Palo Alto, CA, Plano, TX, and Ra’anana, near Tel Aviv, Israel, and with Cisco and Juniper Networks as infrastructure providers and collaborators in the centers.
According to the press release,
AT&T and its industry collaborators selected participants are working in three key areas:
- Connected-health applications that could help identify health concerns earlier and dramatically improve the quality of care
- HTML5 applications that will revolutionize the online experience, and
- Machine-to-machine mobile applications that will help people interact with their environment in meaningful new ways.”
“The innovation centers will help us enhance collaboration and dramatically accelerate the velocity of innovation, taking ideas from concept to reality in mere months as opposed to years,” said John Donovan, AT&T’s chief technology officer. “We’re tapping into cutting-edge design expertise in Silicon Valley, prototyping industry applications – from automotive to education services – in Plano and the deep skills in communications protocols and innovation that reside in Israel. Working across centers, innovation can follow the sun with a near 24-hour cycle time for agile development.”
Israel has a strong presence in the health technology and telecommunications fields. Aside from innovation in biomedical devices such as Given Imaging’s Pillcam and InSightec’s ExAblate 2000, one of the most popular health community websites on the web was founded in Israel, iMedix. Israel’s defense industry and the nature of Israelis to be early adopters, especially when it comes to mobile technology, has driven Israel’s telecommunications field. Some leaders in the field include Alvarion, InfoGin, and Radware. Israel has also attracted several multinational companies in the field, including Intel, Cisco and Motorola, to set up facilities in Israel.
The centers will be run from Palo Alto which is considered to be the center of the mobile development world since the success of the iPhone and Android platforms.
AT&T competitor Verizon Wireless recently announced that it will launch its 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) network in several major US cities by the end of the year. The company is also planning to unveil several new LTE-friendly phones in January 2011. Although Google CEO Eric Schmidt is expected t0 announce the first set of devices, Android ones, on stage, rumors of a Verizon iPhone in 2011 heated up this week with speculation that it might also be debuted then. Considering this new competition and reports that demand for iPhones from AT&T are leveling out, AT&T’s innovation centers announcement comes at a good time and offers significant promise for the network in the future.
Image via closari.
Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has launched an Israel MFA app for the iPhone.
According to the Foreign Ministry, the app (which is in English and free) can be used to,
“Get up-to-date information directly from Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs right to your iPhone. Access the Information Department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s app in order to receive the latest official news from the website, newsroom, featured videos, and photos of current events going on in Israel and the Middle East.”
It was developed by the Israel Ministry of Finance and is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, and provides up-to-date information directly from Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to your iPhone, Pod or Pad.
It is available for download in the Apple app store.
Related Stories:
LoFT releases LooKATOR for Android phones (Video)
Modu isn’t dead
RIP First Else and the Israeli tech industry?
Emblaze Mobile, a subsidiary of Emblaze Ltd., announced yesterday that it was ending its efforts to bring the First Else, its linux-based smartphone, to market.
The announcement had been expected for quite a few months, especially when it failed to meet its Q2 goal of partnering with a wireless carrier. The phone, which debuted in London last November, was hailed for its user-interface which made it easy to access all of the phones functions and features with just the scroll of the thumb. The quality of the device, from the phone to the camera and everything else, wowed those who got to play with it. In fact, it was named the First Else, because it wasn’t just a smartphone, it was something else.
Perhaps the most disappointing thing about its failure is that it was a completely Israeli device. All the hardware and software was developed in Israel. Had it taken off, it had the potential to create lots of jobs in different sectors and to revive Israel’s long-lost manufacturing industry. There’s so many things it could have done for Israel’s tech sector and the Israeli economy overall. On a personal level, I was looking forward to the day when I could sport the First Else and show it off to friends and acquaintances here and abroad.
Instead, it’s failure is a reminder of the poor condition Israel’s tech industry is in. When I first read Emblaze’s announcement yesterday, I, of course, went on to Twitter and shared the article. I noticed afterward that a few friends had already shared the news with me, and one’s response was “add it to the list of magic tricks coming from Eli Reifman’s sleeves. Now you see it, now you don’t.”
Eli Reifman, the current President of Emblaze, co-founded the company in 1994, and is the one mainly responsible for growing it into a publicly traded company. At its height, the company came close to breaking into the FTSE 100. The company’s glory days didn’t last long though due to many factors.
One reason for its most recent failure with the Else is the approach the company took with developing it. In 2009, Emblaze shareholders tried to take control away from Reifman in protest of the Monolith project that he envisioned would “transform the world of mobile phones” when it launched in 2010. While a visionary with seemingly the right ideas, Reifman’s role in the management and execution of the project was less than stellar.
Unfortunately this isn’t the only such story and is connected to the performance of the rest of the industry. For all the success that Israel has had in innovation on the startup level and for multinationals (R&D for them), it is not sustainable. All of the conferences that I attended this past May and June reflected that in the discussions that took place. The solution is to try to grow big FTSE 100 companies but to do so requires good managers who can transform their startups into large companies and then lead these companies. Emblaze’s story reflects the current and past failures of the industry, and, if things stay the same, the future of the Israeli tech industry.
Since Modu was founded in 2007, it has been interesting to watch it rise, as it attracted media attention and raised $85 million, and fall, with postponed and cancelled cell carrier launch plans and massive layoffs.
A victim of the poor economy and the rise in popularity of smartphones, led by Apple’s iPhone, Modu seemed to be breathing its last breaths last November when it announced its largest round of layoffs (110 employees).
Though it seemed that the end was near for Modu, which was founded by serial entrepreneur Dov Moran, in the past week the company has resurfaced, not as a deadpool topic, but as a partner of netbook developer, Asus.
Rumors abound that Asus is working on a new netbook that will enable interconnectivity between smartphones and its netbooks. The benefit will be that netbook users can access the Internet anywhere using the 3G network of their smartphones instead of relying on WiFi.
If Asus, which has its own line of phones, really is working with Modu on this, this could be huge for Modu. Either way, considering its recent partnerships and launches, there still might be a bright future for Modu after all.
Israeli business newspaper, Globes has reported that Google acquired Israeli app publisher LabPixies. The purchase, which is estimated to be at $25 million, is Google’s first in Israel. LabPixies will be integrated into Google’s R&D office in Tel Aviv which focuses on web and mobile development, such as YouTube Annotations and Google Trends, and will focus on iGoogle efforts in the Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The acquisition is expected to also help Android app efforts.
Below is a timeline with some of the major events showing Google’s road to Israel and its acquiring LabPixies.
During the week of April 11, 2010, Arava Power announced a major investment plan for 15 Israeli solar fields. Israeli start-ups are still facing a hard time raising funds in Israel and Israeli researchers have developed a way to secure online data using laser technology. For these stories and more, check below for this week’s headlines.
Cleantech
1. Charged Environment
2. Arava Power Will Invest $535 Million in 15 Israeli Solar Fields
Investment
3. Bitesize Friday – Israeli Funding Recap
4. Israel’s Infinity expanding China investment fund
5. Israeli start-ups face funding crunch at home, turn to US and European investors
Information Technology
6. Total security for online data
7. Clarizen Growing SaaS Work, Project Management Channel
8. WeFi for Android Gets Enhanced Maps and Location Support
Miscellaneous
9. Israeli Team Snags Top Robotics Award for Second Consecutive Year
(Catch Media interview from 2007)
During the week of February 14, 2010, the Eilat-Eilot International Renewable Energy Conference took place and included the announcement of potential plans for joint solar energy projects between Israel, Egypt and Jordan. News broke that Google is in early talks to acquire Israel’s Catch Media to better compete with iTunes and Tawkon announced its solution for avoiding radiation from mobile phones. For these stories and more, check out this week’s Israel-related technology headlines below.
Cleantech
1. Israel’s Solar Industry Aims to Regain its Edge
2. Israel, Egypt Considering Joint Solar Energy Project in Sinai
Investment and M&A
3. Google Wants To Buy Catch Media To Make Android Better
4. JVP’s Erel Margalit Tells Startups: “We Do Early Stage Now!”
Information Technology
5. Augmented Reality Gets a Major Face.com Lift
6. Tawkon enables mobile users to avoid mobile phone radiation without affecting phone usage
7. Comverse enables visual voicemail services on Sony Ericsson handsets for Norway’s NetCom
Miscellaneous
8. Unleavened Media: 10 Israeli mobile companies to watch in 2010
