In late May of 2009 Nexit announced its sixth investment from the Nexit Infocom II fund.
Nexit invested 3 million Euros in Aava Mobile, a developer of smartphone platform designs. The funding will leverage Aava Mobile’s growth and help it become a market leader.
Aava Mobile develops smartphone platform designs based on open technologies such as Linux and Android. The open platform technology will provide more flexibility for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and mobile operators to incorporate their own brand, user interface, content, and services into the devices.
“Our open platform designs have been well received by the global mobile operators, who see this as a new revenue opportunity from new and existing subscribers. The open platform lets operators and OEMs customise their devices easily and differentiate from their competitors,” explained Markus Appel, CEO of Aava Mobile.
The new platform has been designed with operators in mind. As the platform includes both hardware and core software components, it accelerates the development of new handset models significantly. The flexibility of the open platform design also brings new business opportunities for application developers as well as mobile operators.
”The smartphone market is growing fast and steady. With their open platform, Aava Mobile is one of the leaders that will take the market to another level. Operators can have a truly white-label option to brand their handsets and offer more choice for consumers. There will also be new business opportunities for Linux developers that can expand their offerings to smartphones,” comments Pekka Salonoja, General Partner of Nexit Ventures.
The investment in Aava underscores Nexit Ventures’ confidence in the growth of the smartphone market and the growing strength of the Android OS. Read more about the smartphone market and Android on the following pages.
