Conveneer Raises $4.5 Million To Turn Cell Phones Into Servers

Conveneer, a Swedish mobile startup with offices in Lund, Sweden and Palo Alto, California, closed a $4.5 million venture round, led by the Swedish foundation Industrifonden. Broken Arrow Venture Capital also participated. The company previously raised seed money from the founders and Teknoseed.

Conveneer is building a mobile platform called Mikz, which will be able to assign a URL to your mobile phone, making the content on your phone accessible on the Web. In essence, it turns each mobile phone into a Web server. Once your phone has a URL like http://joe.mikz.me, other Web applications and services can ingest the data that is locked in your phone, and also your phone can take advantage of common Web APIs. Mikz can pull information off your phone such as your contacts, GPS coordinates, photos, music, ringtones, and other files. It creates a Web interface for your phone.

That is a powerful idea. How well it works in practice, and on which handsets remains to be seen. The company is talking to both handset manufacturers and mobile carriers to embed the service in new phones. Carriers could strengthen their mobile Web offerings by giving customers their own mobile URL. The business model is selling and maintaining these mobile domains, which can provide a Web interface to a mobile phone. This is the type of premium service for which carriers would charge extra.

The company’s goal is to launch Mikz sometime this year.