Red Bend celebrates FOTA milestones

Before getting the message in my inbox, I had never heard of Red Bend Software before. Little did I know that they provide the market-leading FOTA (Firmware Over-the-Air) client software. In fact, their solution is used by a wide range of cell phones, including those made by Sony Ericsson, Sharp, and NEC.

They celebrated several milestones in 2006, capturing 34 percent market share of all FOTA-enabled cell phones that shipped last year. During those twelve months, they increased the number of compatible handsets from just six to 58, demonstrating an eight-fold increase year-over-year. The same can be said about the number of actual cell phones equipped with the FOTA solution (named vCurrent Mobile), which increased from 10 million in 2005 to 80 million in 2006. They hope to further this figure to 100 million by the end of Q1 2007.

Oh, and in case you didn’t know, FOTA lets you upgrade your firmware wirelessly through your service provider or cell phone manufacturer, rather than having to “flash it” with a USB cable and so forth.