There’s a lot of opportunities in regards to mobile marketing these days, but many new-age methods rely on the hope that most of the target audience is equipped with smartphones. Unfortunately, as most marketers know, that’s simply not a reality.
HipLogic, a unique startup previously known as Numobiq, has the simple intention of bringing smartphone-like features and capabilities to simple feature phones, or mass market devices. Put simply, the company’s platform is designed to bring sophisticated applications to the simplest cell phones by keeping all the complexity in the network. In theory, HipLogic wants to bring the quick, easy interface of the iPhone, Android and Blackberry to more simple-in-nature and lightweight phones that are available for the mass market.
By keeping the heavy-lifting in the background, HipLogic’s platform allows users to toggle on a more iPhone-like interface that can bring with it more smartphone-like content such as real-time data, social networking and apps. It’s all accomplished via a free mobile app that connects the device to HipLogic’s behind-the-scenes technology that incorporates a lightweight JavaScript virtual machine connected to the cloud. That virtual machine can then aggregate information from network operators and the Web to create mash-ups on the device.
This type of mobile technology has been in the works for a while, and with the advent of cloud-based architecture, all the complexity and “heavy-lifting” can be done in the cloud instead of being forced to rely on the slow processors and internal components of today’s mass-market cell phones. In the end, mobile devices will simply be gateways to the cloud, much like netbooks are becoming today.
From a mobile marketing standpoint, the opportunities are obvious. As more feature-phones become able to facilitate smartphone-like technology, the subsequent result is a wider audience for marketers to utilize new-age methods that were once only available to the very small portion of mobile users using smartphones.
Companies like HipLogic definitely have the right idea, mass-market feature phones need to become “smarter,” and a cloud-based approach is a perfect fit.
