Motricity on Monday announced mCore MobileCast, a service for wireless carriers and large companies that want to deliver content to smartphones based on user preferences.
The cloud-based service is designed to make a variety of content available to mobile users based on their location information and previous uses so that receiving the content requires "zero touch" by the users, said Jim Ryan, chief strategy and marketing officer for the Bellevue, Wash.-based Motricity.
For example, if a mobile user had purchased tickets to a rock concert via a mobile device, the MobileCast service would use that information and GPS data to push information to the user about the concert's opening act, parking locations and even places to eat nearby, Ryan said.
Ryan said corporations could use the service to easily connect employees to training and customers to information about products. Audio, video, text and HTML5 content can be delivered. "All that information is in separate places today, but we aggregate it all up," Ryan said. Users will opt-in for the service, which means "they are going to have to trust the entity providing it," whether it is a a worker's employer or a wireless carrier.
The per-user service is "cost effective" although he would not describe the terms.
Motricity provides mobile infrastructure services to "hundreds of enterprises" and 10 major wireless carries, including the top four in the U.S., Ryan said.
Tole Hart, an analyst at Yankee Group, said customers will use the MobileCast service if they find the information being sent to them "relevant and usable." He said FanFeedr, which sends information to sports fans based on their preferences, offers a successful sports-related service that Motricity hopes to provide for a broader base of topics.
Ryan said Motricity competes against Internet and communications infrastructure providers such as Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent and Amdocs.