After working at AT&T (NYSE:T), Stephen Waldis saw an opportunity to build a company to benefit from the wireless boom, and in 2000, he founded Synchronoss Technologies (NASDAQ:SNCR).
Unfortunately, it was not good timing, with the telecom industry falling into a depression by 2002. But Waldis did not give up on his vision, eventually taking Synchronoss public in 2006 with Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) as the lead underwriter.
To learn more about the company, I recently had a chance to interview Waldis:
IPOPlaybook: What does Synchronoss do?
Waldis: Our solutions connect, synchronize and activate any device or service across any channel or network for Tier One Communications Service Providers and Original Equipment Manufacturers across the globe. Some of our customers include AT&T�and Verizon (NYSE:VZ).
IPOPlaybook: Describe your �over-the-air process.�
Waldis: This past holiday season, we saw the percentage of mobile users making purchases directly from their devices grow dramatically. We feel that providing the capability to upgrade or select new devices and services directly from the device provides an optimal experience with our carrier customers and their end users — thereby increasing the adoption of such services.
IPOPlaybook: It sounds like SNCR is taking a Dropbox approach to things.
Waldis: That�s a good analogy. The traditional upgrade-and-sync process has been compared to going to the dentist. But with SNCR, you can do this without going to a store. It�s all in the cloud. Although with SNCR, we get paid with every transaction on the platform.
IPOPlaybook: Your company has made some good acquisitions over the years, such as for FusionOne.
Waldis: The company provided the core technology to allow users to sync their phones for upgrades. Since we bought the company, we�ve improved the functions and also made it carrier-ready. We currently manage over 3 billion entities in the cloud and perform 7 million synchronizations between the cloud and smart devices per day.
With the U.S. mobile phone market saturated, the carriers need to find new services to sell. This one has been very popular.
IPOPlaybook: Your latest deal is for Miyowa?
Waldis: Yes, the company is based in France and has developed a mobile social networking platform. It allows users to go directly to their network address book and find the social activity from Facebook, Twitter, AIM and other services. It�s a much more user-friendly way to use them. The mobile address book is the most relevant address book for the user. So with our widely deployed contact management solution and the Miyowa product, we can create more relevant social graphs which will be invaluable to both the consumers as well as carriers and social networking companies.
Our ConvergenceNow Plus+ platform helps the carriers better utilize their most precious asset, their spectrum, more efficiently. Integration with the Miyowa product line enables the carriers to create offers that are more relevant to specific demographics among their user base.
The carriers will also be able to develop the mobile social graph for their customers. This will make it easier to offer new services or better upgrades — directly from the phone or device of choice.
Tom Taulli runs the InvestorPlace blog�IPO Playbook, a site dedicated to the hottest news and rumors about initial public offerings. He also is the author of��All About Short Selling��and��All About Commodities.��Follow him on Twitter at�@ttaulli. As of this writing, he did not own a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
No comments:
Post a Comment