ZenZui lets cellphone users zoom into the Web
NEW YORK (Reuters) - ZenZui, a newly formed company spun out of Microsoft Corp.'s technology research, aims to help cellphone subscribers easily link to their favorite Web sites, even on tiny mobile phone screens.
ZenZui unveils its namesake technology -- for Zooming User Interface -- on Tuesday at the CTIA wireless show in Orlando, Florida.
The company's early trials come as the use of cellphones for entertainment and commerce is expected to take off, offering new opportunities for advertisers to reach consumers and for wireless carriers to reap added revenue.
"About 5 years ago we started to really look at the problem of mobile (Internet) browsing," said ZenZui co-founder John SanGiovanni, who previously worked within Microsoft research.
"Everyone agrees it's a pretty clunky experience even on the highest bandwidth," SanGiovanni told Reuters. "We wanted to completely reinvent the experience of consuming content."
ZenZui's technology creates a page of up to 36 "tiles" clustered into groups of four on a cellphone screen, each square providing a direct link to a favorite Internet site or an information feed such as weather or traffic reports.
Using a cellphone's keypad, a user can "zoom" into a particular cluster, and from there into a single tile, to access Web information.
Users can choose tiles to appear on their phone, which can be linked to such Web offerings as online movie rental lists, food reviews or Internet booksellers. ZenZui aims to make the technology generally available by year's end.
Advertisers could offer frequent customers a specially designed tile to add to their phone, or cellphone users could swap with friends tiles of pop icons or social network sites.
"The business model is advertising-marketing driven," said Eric Hertz, Chief Executive at ZenZui and a veteran wireless industry executive. "The subscriber pays nothing and the carrier doesn't have to pay anything for this application."
Hertz cited data that advertisers could spend up to $11 billion to place commercial messages on mobile devices in the next 5 years. ZenZui is in talks with carriers, advertisers and content producers for use of its application, he said.
ZenZui hopes its technology will make it easier to access the Web on mobile phones compared with the cumbersome process of allowing standard Internet links to load onto the device.
A new crop of smartphones and other wireless devices with larger screens expected to hit stores this year should also help make ZenZui's format attractive, its executives said.
ZenZui was developed within Microsoft IP Ventures, a program created in May 2005 to commercialize smaller projects born of research at the world's largest software maker.
Microsoft retains an equity stake in the company, which also closed $12 million in financing from Oak Investment Partners and Hunt Ventures.
