Soonr, a company that allows you to sync and store files on your mobile phone and other devices, has raised $4.5 million in funding from HighBAR Ventures and existing investors. This brings the startup’s total funding to over $20 million.
Soonr sync your files to cloud storage via a downloadable client that runs in the background of both mobile devices, Macs and PCs. When you’re on the go, you can access these files with the web browser in your mobile phone. Soonr also offers an iPhone app and works on Netbooks. → Read More
In this day and age, with technology, no one works alone — that’s how Soonr sees it. And it’s a key part of the company’s offering: collaboration. Another is portability, and with the launch of the 3.0 version of its software, Soonr is expanding in both of those areas.
And this update comes complete with an attempt to leverage two of the hottest things out there: the iPhone and netbooks. Soonr launched its iPhone app back in January, and despite supporting some 800 phones, the company still touts that one as a key part of its business. And netbooks are a slightly newer phenomenon that the company is now mentioning as fitting in to what it’s trying to do. Sure, Soonr works on netbooks, just like it works on other computers. But buzz-worthy products aside, the key idea is that you can access your documents from a huge variety of devices, no matter where you are. → Read More
SoonR, a backup service focused on enabling access to your files from mobile devices, has raised $9.5M from Cisco Systems in a Series B round of financing. This brings the total funding for this two-year-old company up to $15.5M. SoonR synchs your files to cloud storage via a downloadable client that runs in the background of both Macs and PCs. When you’re on the go, you can access these files with the web browser in your mobile phone. While the user interface served up will be tailored to the capabilities of your phone, the functionality will always be the same; you can view, print, share, and fax files. You can also a browse backup copies of your emails and talk on Skype. In September 2006, we wrote about how SoonR had partnered with WebEx (since bought by Cisco for $3.2 billion) so that WebEx conferences could be accessed via SoonR on the mobile. This recent round of funding should help forge even greater connections between SoonR and Cisco’s technologies. If you’re an American, you would be forgiven for not having heard of SoonR since the company has primarily sought user adoption in Europe. It has partnered with many European carriers such as TeliaSonera of Denmark. CEO Patrick McVeigh says that European carriers are more willing to adopt features like SoonR because there is more competition among them, and issues like coverage – a major topic of advertising here in the states – have already been solved. He expects the United States to reach the point of where Europe is currently at in this respect by around 2009. You can sign up for a free version of SoonR through its website, but you’ll have to pay a premium through a carrier if you want more than 100mb of storage. McVeigh says that despite SoonR’s focus on the mobile access of files, 60 to 80% of usage is still through the PC browser, suggesting that it serves as a decent all-purpose backup solution as well. CrunchBase Information Soonr Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Web conferencing giant WebEX and mobile/PC connecting startup SoonR announced tonight that they have entered a partnership that will let users access WebEX conferences via mobile devices. WebEX has launched a new platform called WebEX connect which brings together select third party services to be integrated with the company’s web conferencing. Mobile access to WebEX is expected to be available in 3 to 6 months. The web conferencing space is growing increasingly competitive and the high-end WebEX has got to continue to innovate to compete with the much less expensive GoToMeeting, Adobe’s Breeze and a number of free web conferencing solutions like DimDim that are coming to market. Unlike Salesforce’s AppExchange, which offers API access to a large number of developers and on occasion leads to an acquisition (see the Kieden deal) WebEX appears to be opening a much more limited platform and hiring select outside partners to integrate their services. SoonR is a company we’ve profiled here before, it allows users to search and access files on their desktop computers from more than 450 types of mobile phones. This isn’t the first application the company has moved to offer via mobile devices, they offer Skype by phone. SoonR has been making a lot of big announcements lately; last week they released what they call the first mobile AJAX service in conjunction with Opera Mobile and the closed a Series A round of funding with $6 million lead by Clearstone Venture Partners and Intel Capital. → Read More
Soonr, the company that lets you access desktop files and Skype from your mobile phone, has released a version for the Mac. Mike profiled Soonr in May and the lack of Mac support was his one complaint. The new version is integrated with Spotlight and can render Photoshop files from your desktop into jpg for viewing on your phone. Looks cool. → Read More
Silicon Valley based SoonR has a beta product that allows users to access applications and files on their Windows computer via their cell phone (no Mac support yet, but its coming). If your cell phone is web enabled, you can use SoonR to access Outlook, pictures and other files and applications on your PC. MobileCrunch reviewed SoonR back in March when it first went into Beta. On Thursday SoonR will be announcing Soonr Talk, which will allow Skype calls to be made from a standard cell phone. It will work through SoonR’s basic product – access Skype on your home PC through your browser and initiate a call with a contact or contacts. SoonR will then call your cell phone from that PC (using Skype Out credits), and call the contacts via normal skype calling. Co-founder and VP Marketing Song Huang showed me the product in action and set up a call with a few key strokes on his cell. It works great. SoonR is free, and will be launching premium services in the future (such as a feature that allows SoonR to work even if your PC is powered down – SoonR will cache the data you want to be able to access). As soon as they have a Mac version of SoonR, I’m in. More screen shots here. → Read More
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