Seed round: Privately funded by CEO, CTO and other private investors, $1.6 million. Series A: Venture funding from Motorola Ventures, $2.8 million. Raising Series B in Q2 mid-2007.
Competitors
Direct competitors include JINI at Sun, and IBM and Xerox projects. Secondary competitors include companies using brute-force building point interoperability solutions with mainstream technologies. As brute-force requires convincing device manufacturers to deploy different but compatible software on their devices—and users downloading software for devices— only overwhelming applications can gain broad adoption.
Product Description
DART software makes ubiquitous interoperability practical across mobile phones, PCs, set-tops, consumer electronics and Internet servers. DART turns all such devices into one virtual device, so that anyone can introduce new applications, devices and services that play well with existing devices without installing new software or drivers and without the need to coordinate with device manufacturers. DART also introduces powerful human relationship–based “Automagical Synchronization” and “SocialSecurity” features.
Market Opportunity
Most digital devices with two-way connectivity can use DART. Short-term market development focuses on mobile phones, headsets, PCs, Macs, set-tops and Internet servers. Richard Windsor, of Nomura Securities, estimates the current applications and services market just for mobile devices as at between $4 and $6.5 billion.
DEMO Says
The proliferation of smart devices, media appliances, mobile phones and computers is driving a proliferation of expectation that all of these electronics will work together, seamlessly and securely sharing data and applications. DARTdevices fills that tall order by providing the core intelligence that lets any device discover, access and share applications with any other DART-enabled device. The company’s approach to virtualizing devices makes smart sense, and we hope device OEMs are just as smart in adopting this new component technology.