Neuralitic Systems, a company which provides marketing insights for operators and mobile service providers, has announced a $3m investment from the Blackberry Partners fund last week.

The company also raised additional funds from Vertex Capital, BDC Venture Capital, and Go Capital Fund in the past 4 months, in a total of $10million.

See this post for more info about the Blackberry fund.

Neuralitic allows mobile carriers and service providers to know exactly the behaviors of their users and how they use data-based services. This would be useful especially to the likes of Bell or Telus to craft Blackberry and Windows Mobile offerings, although I am not sure how it could be used by other platforms, such as Android or the iPhone, since the latter two has taken away the “packaging” role of carriers, with this being done now by Application stores.

Airborne and iNovia Capital announced last week a $2million financing round. 

Airborne is a Montreal tech company producing mobile tools and applications, with a very diverse product line, from games, SMS apps, to wallpapers, ringtones and mobile marketing tools.

The financing round by iNovia Capital has been presented by both companies as a renewal, after Airborne’s executive team “restructured and refocused” the company, with the investment presented as the main driver now for future growth. Chris Arsenault of iNovia, who has worked previously with Airborne’s founders, also joins the board of directors.

While it’s great to see a VC firm like iNovia support local tech companies, in a booming market (mobile), it’s noteworthy to see that Airborne Mobile has been around for 10 years. It’s a relatively “safe” investment, in a company which is almost a service provider, akin to GameLoft; not a startup with a product. Airborne also stated that more custom games and applications for niche markets were planned for upcoming months, but I haven’t seen references or objectives for promising platforms like Android, the iPhone, or the Blackberry.

The first edition of the CWMF was held on Thursday in Montreal. We were 200 business people with a strong interest in wireless management and in wireless innovation. I see in this event as well as in the recent Rogers data plans drop the possibility for Canada to remain a place where wireless world leaders can exist/grow.

Iain Grant kicks ass. Canada just ahead of Guyana.

Iain got everyone to laugh when he mentioned Canada’s peer group in term of mobile penetration. Nevertheless 2008 has seen a significant drop in data plans. And the new entrants should lead to a voice plans drop. Not much to expect for business users yet.

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Neuralitic Systems has announced a $7 million funding from Vertex Venture Capital, an Israel-based venture Fund, as well as from BDC and Go Capital Fund, to fund their expansion.

Neuralitic makes SevenFlow, an analytics software that allows telecom companies to see how wireless data access is consumed by their customers. Neuralitic states that since “voice revenues are flattening”, carriers are flocking to wireless data to maximize their revenue per subscriber. Neuralitic can then help carriers understand what their customers really wants, and ultimately offer them the appropriate application & service packages.

As Mark MacLeod points out, it’s all happenning in Montreal. iNovia Capital also announced 2 days ago a “multi-million” dollar investment in Nanoledge, which will be relocating to Canada. I’ve heard that things are not so rosy down south these days, but as far as I’m concerned, everything tech is booming in Montreal. (see this, this and this)

OZ Communications, a very successufl mobile communication software provider, announced tuesday that they were being bought by Nokia, and they’ll integrated into their Nokia Services & Software division. Since OZ is a private company, details of the deal were not disclosed, and we’ll have to wait until Q4 2008 to see the amount paid by Nokia.

Apart from OZ’s diverse array of mobile messanging software, its most valuable assets is its relationships with mobile carriers across North America and Europe, with 5.5 million paying users.

This is very good news for OZ’s founders, and for any other mobile software upstart in Montreal, as you can’t find any better exit than an acquisition by Nokia, the leading mobile company in the world, with a proven track record for innovation, and will still be the heavyweight in the room even if there are new contenders. Alternatively, you could wonder if OZ could grow and become a Fortune 500 company without Nokia, but they would have had to reinvent themselves, such as developing for the iPhone or the Android platform instead of their business model with carriers.

The question also remains if the OZ engineering team is to stay in Montreal and become a Nokia R&D center (I’m crossing fingers) or they’ll be “shipped” to Finland. Either way, I hope we’ll see the existing talent(s) at OZ starting new ventures in Montreal.

Normand Cyr, CEO of Mobile Maestria, organises the first Canadian Wireless Management Forum. More than 200 participants are expected. The event is taking place on Thursday the 9th of October in Montreal. It brings together some of the most innovative businesses in Canada: Research In Motion, Lipso, Air Canada, Soluteo, Wavesat, Radio IP Software, Vidéotron, The SeaBoard Group, StrategyCorp, …

I will cover the event for MontrealTechWatch. Please feel free to get in touch with me if you plan to attend the event. You can also join the LinkedIn group to start discussing with the participants and the speakers.

- Adrien O’Leary

Links
- Event: http://ww.wirelessmanagementforum.ca/
- Schedule: http://www.forumgestionsansfils.ca/program.php
- Registration: http://www.forumgestionsansfils.ca/registration.php

Disclaimer: I have worked for Mobile Maestria, who is the promoter of the event, in September.

Austin Hill presented today at Techcrunch50 Akoha, a social gaming service for people who want to play it forward.

He handled superbly the presentation, with a mix between personal stories, the demo, and also introducing the cards. The presentation was received very positively by the judging panel; and when they asked for details, Austin Hill told about upcoming new features, showing the project’s maturity, and also showing clearly that this is just the beginning, with much more exciting features to come. Alex Eberts and Austin Hill also distributed kindly schwag to attendees plus decks of cards.

Seeing this presentation, I think it’s fair to say that Akoha deserve all the buzz… Stay tuned, a review shall come up very soon.

Praized has launched yesterday an iPhone version of the main portal hub, with a focus on search, and also top places near the user. The geo-localization feature is not yet implemented, but it shows a glimpse of a web application for finding local places on the move.

In the same day, the startup also replaced their homepage with activity streams of users, à la Facebook, with updates coming from all the communities powered by Praized. Previously, Praized.com was also in itself a “Tribe”, but it seems it’s shifting away to become a central hub.

Seeing the frequent updates from Praized, with new product features coming every week, I’m thinking that they are executing a highly detailed plan. As an external observer, I wish though that their team, beginning from the CEO, use the product more often on their blogs and communities, as advertised initially. But so far, the only founder who’s using the Praized platform and highly integrated it in his blog is Sylvain Carle, with handy links to the place’s Praized page. Or maybe I’ve been dissecting too much Jason Calacanis …

WirelessNorth, which tracked the national wireless auctions for the past months, sums up the result of the auctions, which were setup by Industry Canada to provide additionnal bandwidths to new and existing wireless companies.

The 3 existing telecommunication companies, namely Bell Canada, Rogers and Telus won additional frequencies in most provinces. Rogers Wireless alone brought to the table $999 million, in an auction that was planned previously to gather in total just $1.5 billion. If you had any doubts about the profitability of this industry, the auctions just confirmed that it’s a cash cow for the existing carriers.

For consumers, the most important fact to remember from these auctions is the arrival of 2 new companies, Globalive and Quebecor. Globalive managed to get frequencies in all Canadian provinces, except Quebec, while the media group Quebecor is now covering all Quebec, plus South-Eastern Ontario. Since previous reports from these companies confirmed that they will both use the GSM standard, they could (at least in theory) offer a nation-wide wireless access to their customers through a partnership. Of course, this will also mean lower prices for consumers, due to increased competition. Quebecor especially is known for this business strategy when they acquired Videotron and then slashed prices, reviving the cable in Quebec. I expect (well I hope) the same thing to happen; with much lower plans offered to consumers, which will then boost mobile usage, with new user behaviours & mobile applications.

So what’s next? Each bidder has 30 days to pay the auctionned spectrums; and the federal government will also see through each bidder’s structrure, which has to be at least 47% Canadian-owned. Each new carrier will then have to compete (or partner) to get key locations to install their antennas; followed by the roll out. This is estimated to cost $500 million, taking at least 1 year. (which means if you were waiting for a 2nd carrier to get an iPhone, you will have to wait for at least the 2nd half of 2009)

So everyone complained about Rogers but Apple (and Rogers) finally won. This morning, Rogers and Fido stores in downtown Montreal had as much as 100 people lined up, and the whole activation system blew up one hour later. Even in late afternoon hours, customers were still coming in, not to protest data plan rates, but to hand in their credit cards. Clerks had then to use the “emergency activation line”.

It’s an iconic day, celebrating Apple’s dominance in consumer electronics, and also Apple’s major influence in mass culture. I’ve seen articles stating that the next generation of computing, following Moore’s law, would be netbooks such as Asus’s eee PC; but seeing the frenzy downtown, I’m ready to bet on the iPhone.

I will end here for the article; here’s a small funny video though for those who want to see more of the shiny gadget.

(click to see the video at bombe.tv)