Soonr, mobile document reader, raises round and expands in Europe

January 7, 2008 | Eric Eldon | Comments | |

soonrscreenshot010708.pngSoonR, a company that lets you upload documents from your desktop then read and share them from your phone, has raised $9.5 million in a round led by Cisco Systems.

While Google and other companies are introducing web-based document services, such as Google Docs — documents that you can also read on a mobile device — Soonr is focused on businesses that rely on desktop-based documents. The Campbell, Calif. and Denmark-based company makes money by reaching these customers through deals with mobile carriers.

It can process more than 40 document file types, including Microsoft Office documents, as well as rarer file types such as AutoCAD and Visio. It stores your documents online — which means you have a copy whether or not your computer is on.

Soonr has been finding the most success with carriers in Europe, where its document service is bundled in with other services.. It has cut a number of deals there, including a partnership with TeliaSonera of Denmark.

More than 50 percent of customers who use SoonR’s basic service through a carrier are choosing to upgrade to premium services, chief executive Patrick McVeigh tells me. While each carrier has a different, customized premium offering, a typical one will include extra storage space for documents as well as features like printing and faxing.

The company is testing its software with with unannounced partners and hopes to bring on many other carriers by the end of this year. It also has a joint development and marketing partnership with Texas and London-based mobile office services company QuickOffice.

It is working with Cisco on integration with WebEx’s PC Now — another service for accessing your documents from anywhere.

The company competes, in some sense, with a range of other online document storage services, ranging from Box.net to Apple’s .mac service. Neither of these services offer the same range of document file-type reading and sharing options that SoonR does, for mobile devices.

Previous investors Intel Capital and Clearstone Venture Partners also participated in the round. The company has received a total of $15.5 million to date. Our previous coverage here.

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About the Author, Eric Eldon

Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.

  • Bhargava
    I wonder what Soonr will do once the full deployment of Wimax is done and most people will have access to the internet at relatively higher speeds on the go. Add to this, the plethora of PDA(like) and smartphones will only add to the woes. One strategic interest for Cisco would be to breed the technology needed for the mobility technology. Other than that, I see another sitting duck in making. Cheers!