Intercasting has launched an upgrade to its Anthem platform, expanding the suite of supported applications to include e-mail, instant messaging and Twitter. The new version also will allow faster data access across carrier networks.
For feature phone users, the platform provides access to applications that would not normally be supported, such as social networking and Anthem’s own app store.
Intercasting is clearly focused on servicing the huge feature phone market, but Founder, Chairman and CEO Shawn Conahan believes that there is a much broader appeal for application developers, carriers and smartphone users. “Developers have been pulling their hair out for years,” he says. “They now write their app in Java script once, and it works across all handsets on all carriers using our platform.”
Conahan’s inspiration for the Anthem app store came in part from Apple. “They showed that when you make it easy for consumers to buy apps, they will.” Sales from Intercasting’s app store form a major part of the company’s business model, along with licensing fees from carriers.
With smartphone users already able to access social networking, e-mail and app stores, Conahan thinks that smartphone carriers will have the most to gain by using Anthem. “It will allow them to offer the same services across all platforms, and the consumer will see the same interface on all handsets, making things easier to find.”
Even with the upgrades to Anthem, Intercasting faces competition from a number of other platforms offering similar services, including UI Evolution’s UIEngine, mFoundry mojax and Everypoint Nemo.
