VentureBeat

The countdown to the MobileBeat2008 conference continues.

Today we’re adding seven more companies to the list of nominees for best mobile company, or the one with the biggest, baddest idea and that has a decent chance at being a business hit. The top 30 winners will be shortly and invited to the conference. There, an overall winner will be announced.

The latest nominees, and the final ones to be added to our list, are as follows:

• mBit — a P2P search and file-sharing technology for phones, overcoming standard MMS limitations to 300kb
• SMS Gupshup — a twitter-like clone seeing heady growth in Asia
• Vlingo — a slick speech recognition interface for the Blackberry
• Yap — a mobile voice transcription service
• Greystripe — lets developers insert ads on the fly into their mobile games, bypassing carriers and other ad incumbents
• Soonr — a mobile document reader
• Bones in Motion — cellphone GPS tracking for athletes; still a niche, but attractive

We now have a total of 80 on the list. Voting on the list will be extended for one more week, until noon July 2. Then we’ll begin to select the winners, taking into account the late arrival of the recent nominees (we’ll give them appropriate consideration, even if they have fewer votes). We’ll also review signs of gaming our system (which we’ve tried to minimize by requiring people to register with names) and take appropriate measures.

I think this an excellent final nominee list. I’m not sure if any list can be perfect, but we gave our internal selection panel a mandate to take a hard look at the write-in submissions from you, our readers, and to let in only those that have big ideas and a chance to succeed.

The panel let in only a fraction of the dozens that were submitted.

Some themes emerge. There are way too many VoIP companies (up to 300), and so even though a player like Nimbuzz is doing a lot, the panel ultimately decided to reject it in this latest round. There’s also a plethora of location-based services popping up. So while Loopt made it to our original list, in part because Loopt has signed deals with all the major carriers (it launched on Verizon today), other similar companies had to exhibit other forms of excellence in order to make the list. So the panel rejected Brightkite, for example, and Geospot, which makes mobile maps interactive and provides local information. Making the list, however, are new services such as mBit, but also established leaders like DeviceScape. The requirement for submission is that the company be private.

Other trends are clear. Mobile search is hot, because of the very different mobile interface. Even second or third mobile search players — those without a brand such as Google — remain promising on mobile if they are clever enough. And yet mobile search company NearbyNow, which lets you search for items at your nearest mall, was rejected by the panel. Destination sites like this will have a tough time. Like I said last time, I hope these rejected companies can prove us wrong and go on to be huge successes.

The MobileBeat conference on July 24 will follow the release of the 3G iPhone, which is sparking a wave of developer interest. The conference aims to host a high-level conversation about the mobile landscape, including the iPhone’s impact. We’ll talk about how it stacks up against Android, what the Nokia-Symbian move means, and more. We have some great speakers lined up — from Rich Miner, of Google’s Android project, to Matt Murphy, of the iFund.

Sales of our earlybird tickets are moving quickly. Go here to get a $100 discount, which ends Friday.

Finally, thanks to our sponsors, Sun Microsystems, Norwest Venture Partners and Amiando for making this possible. If you’re interested in sponsoring the event, please contact Jacob Mullins.

Today we’ve opened voting for the best mobile start-ups of 2008.

The winners, as determined by readers, will be invited to present at MobileBeat2008, our conference in July.

To vote, go here. Please vote for the company you think has the boldest idea, but also has an opportunity to be a grand-slam business hit. You can vote in two categories: 1) applications, and 2) infrastructure/services. We’ll publish more details about the actual awards shortly.

We’re holding the conference because of the revolution happening in the mobile industry. We’re seeking to create a high-level conversation about the changes (i.e, new spectrum, new entrants, a move to open networks). But we also want to recognize the leading start-ups in the industry.

We’ll cut off voting on July 2. We’ll then invite the 30 top-ranked companies to present at our MobileBeat2008 conference, to be held on July 24. The top 10 companies get to pitch directly to the entire audience.

See our original announcement here, which has more. Check out more panel information and sign up for the conference here. A second batch of Early Bird tickets lasts until next Friday.

Who should come? Developers and investors, of course, but also other players with a stake in this fast-changing game. More broadband, smarter phones, an opening of networks, and excitement created by the iPhone and Android are combining to create a wave of new opportunity. If you’re a developer, what platforms should you write for, and how do you monetize your application? If you’re a content provider, carrier or handset maker, what do you need to keep in mind?

Meanwhile, here’s our initial list of nominees:

Application companies:

AirG — generates multi-milion dollars in revenue by selling its mobile social communities to operators.

Bluepulse — in the bidding to be the multi-purpose messaging gateway on mobile, letting users share photos and more.

Comvu — live video company that focuses on mobile broadcasting, is used by Reuters, and was also the world’s first mobile webcasting service.

Chatterous — early days for this company, but
it offers a platform for communicating any way you want. For example, it
lets you send an email, but your friend can receive in SMS if they want.

Ebuddy — lets you chat across clients (AIM, Yahoo Messenger, gtalk, etc), tailored for the mobile phone.

Earthcomber — a navigation service that helps users find nearby locations and events; the listings are personalized to your interests.

Facebook — despite garnering initial fame via the PC Web, Facebook has emerged as one of the fast-growing mobile applications; clearly a front-runner.

Flixwagon — mobile videocasting company that competes with Comvu for the attention of citizen journalists and partnered with MTV for coverage of Super Tuesday.

ItsMy — mobile-only social network + advertising platform + clever advertising = one of the highest traffic growth mobile companies.

Jumbuck — offers mobile community products like “Fast Flirting” and “Power Chat” to operators including Verizon and Virgin Mobile.

Jumptap — a leading mobile search engine provider with a advertising platform, letting carriers monetize search.

Kyte.tv — another live video company, lets you broadcast live video from a phone and keeps it organized on a web site through a personalized player.

Loop Mobile Ltd — one of the world’s largest mobile social networking providers (white-labeled) with multi-million dollars in revenue, also known for innovative marketing (website).

Loopt — a company offering location-based applications for users of various carriers, including Sprint and Verizon.

Mig33 — a mobile application that’s seeing rapid global growth for its bundle of SMS text messaging, instant messaging and cheap calls.

MocoSpace – a US mobile-only social network and one of the industry’s best examples of how to grow off-deck.

Mygamma (BuzzCity) — has created possibly the second biggest mobile advertising platform on top of its successful social network.

MyStrands — a social recommendation service that wants to steal away YouTube’s music video viewing audience.

Mywaves — a very easy video sharing product that has grown quickly, now offers advertising, and has cut a deal with MTV

Pelago — its Whrrl service lets you update your friends (including about your location) as well as discover other things like reviews of movies in your area.

Peperonity — a mobile-only social network with one of the industry’s highest off-deck traffic, making it of Admob’s biggest publishers.

Qik — Robert Scoble’s favorite live video streaming platform, Qik also offers RSS feeds for its content; parent company Visivo Communications just took its first funding in April.

Radar — offers easy photo-sharing and commenting on all phones, and boasts over one million users.

Rearden Commerce — a mobile concierge service, that lets you track travel plans, calendar, events and reviews all from a single application

Treemo — mainly known as a mobile community provider to third parties like CBS Mobile (website).

Twitter — a micro-messaging service, featuring one-liners, that has become all the rage among techies and beyond, despite performance problems.

Xumii — offers an SMS service where users can have all their social contacts available, form private groups and also share rich media (website).

Zannel — dubbed the “multi-media” Twitter, it shows the industry how well you can grow with rich media messaging and an open API (possibly the frontrunner with that in mobile).

Zumobi — offers mobile users a way to create their own mobile widgets; this is a spin-off from Microsoft, formerly called Zenzui, now an independent private company.

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Infrastructure companies/service

4Info — wants to change mobile marketing by offering consumers, publishers and advertisers SMS services to distribute content, alerts, news and advertising.

Admob — a leading mobile ad network, serving billions of ad impressions monthly globally, and doing interesting analytics.

Aggregate Knowledge — a recommendation service that started on the Web, but is now mobile, letting readers enjoy what like-minded users have enjoyed previously, used by CBS.

Agito Networks — lowers cost of mobile communications by using WiFi instead of cellular networks. Enterprise play.

Amobee — has built advertising technology for large carriers such as Vodafone and Telefonica to support non-voice apps such as browsing, SMS, MMS and games.

Beceem — a Silicon Valley company offering a next-generation mobile broadband chip for WiMax, being used by Motorola and also Intel.

Bytemobile — provides mobile internet software and services for data
networks operators, allowing things like browsing and access of video (website).

Dashwire — stores a backup of all your mobile info on the cloud and lets you access it on a Web page. Offers one-click photo uploads to Flickr, Facebook, etc.

Echovox — offers publishers and advertisers ways to market content across all mobile platforms (website).

Ecrio — an instant messaging company that tacks on mobile payments and coupons, active in Japan with NTT DoCoMo and backed by Visa.

FushionOne — lets you backup pretty much any content on your mobile phone.

GetJar — hosts mobile application downloads for other companies and developers.

IMMI — pays for you cellphone (at least during trials) in exchange for the ability to listen in on your life throughout the day. The goal is to make advertising more tailored and effecient.

IntegratedMobile — serves the enterprise through its lifecycle management technology platform, called iManage. It offers consulting and professional services (website).

Jasper Wireless — a back-end mobile infrastructure company (GSM/GPRS), providing communications between mobile devices; supports Dash. Sequoia backed.

Knowtate — provides tags on physical objects, which let people with mobile phones find out much more information about them.

Kodiak Networks — push-to-talk and other infrastructure tech for mobile. Redpoint backed (website).

mBlox — connects mobile users with third-party content providers; raised $22 million in January.

Medio — a mobile search company, available on the decks of carriers such as Verizon and Vodafone.

MobiTV — offers TV and other digital content on your mobile devices via carriers; raised $100 million in 2006.

Mobopia — lets Flash developers build mobile applications on the phone (website).

Myxer — a product of MVisible Technologies, Myxer helps manage delivery of digital media to mobile devices (website).

Numobiq — turns dumb phones into smart phones via a software that sits on top of the mobile phone’s operating system, backed by Benchmark.

Ontela — offers easy-to-use photo-taking and sharing technology that lets you upload media from cameras to PC; White-labels for carriers.

Playphone — offers all kinds of personalized entertainment, such as ringtones, mobile games, wallpapers and text services.

Pudding Media — creates voice recognition software that picks up keywords from conversations and deliver contextual ads based on them.

Skydeck — lets you analyze your phone calling behavior based on bills you get from your phone carrier, for example showing you the strength of your friendships.

Skyfire — a mobile browser that uses compatibility with the latest versions of Flash and Ajax to deliver an experience that’s as rich as browsing on your PC.

Smaato — a mobile advertising technology company specializing in targeted, in-application ads; it recently raised $3.5 million.

TeleNav — hardly a startup, this nine-year-old private company was early to location-based services, offering mapping, and tracking workforce and other assets (website).

Thumbplay — a ringtones, mobile games and wallpapers company that recently raised $18 million.

Trafficcast — provides real-time and predictive traffic and travel time information. The company is more than ten years old, but it’s still private.

Ubiquisys — a Google-backed Femtocell company offering hardware that lets cell phones run on home broadband networks.

Webalo — makes it easier to navigate spreadsheets and other business information on your mobile device; recently launched the ability to keep your data behind a firewall.

VentureBeat is proud to announce MobileBeat 2008, a conference focused on the innovation wave sweeping the mobile industry.

This conference, to be held in Sunnyvale, Calf. on July 24, will seek answers to the biggest questions for entrepreneurs developing next-generation mobile applications.

There are two parts. First, we’ll invite what we think are the best 30 start-ups in mobile, pursuing the most hairy, audacious goals to present their products. We want the best bar none. So we’re going to let our readers help in the selection process of those top 30. The top 10 companies get to pitch directly to the entire audience. An overall winner will be chosen, based on who has a) the boldest idea, but at the same time b) is likely to be a business grand-slam if successful.

Second, we’ll host a high-level conversation about the revolution happening in mobile — including panels about how to best to build mobile applications and how to monetize them. If there’s one story capturing the attention of Silicon Valley start-ups these days, it’s mobile: People are buying smarter phones. We’re taking them to bed with us. We’re getting used to loading new applications on them.

Google and Apple are driving more change, with Google pushing for open access on the wireless spectrum to allow new devices (with new applications) and Apple’s iPhone sparking fascination with a new browsing interface.

Hundreds of start-ups are building new businesses based on these devices and platforms. Even carriers are getting in the game, with Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam saying yesterday that Verizon’s open project already has “tens” of devices in the application process and likely to hit market by the end of the year.

The conference’s target audience is mobile developers and investors, but we’ll also reach out to reps from the carriers, handset makers, content producers (who want to distribute on mobile) and the ad networks allowing it to happen.

Among our panel participants (pictured above from left to right) are Matt Murphy, a partner at leading Silicon Valley’s venture firm Kleiner Perkins, who runs the firm’s iFund; Android co-founder Rich Miner, now helping Google push its mobile platform; Richard Wong of Accel (backer of Facebook, and another leading wireless investor); Jeff Sellinger, who leads CBS Mobile; and Sam Altman, founder of Loopt, a company with new technology — location-based social applications — that we’ll be hearing more about.

I’ll announce more about the voting procedure for companies shortly.

Meantime, those interested in sponsoring the event should contact Jacob Mullins.

Many thanks to Norwest Venture Partners and Sun Microsystems for becoming our initial sponsors. Thanks too, to our co-host and venue, Plug and Play Tech Center.

We’re now releasing our first batch of tickets at an “Early Bird” discounted price of $350, obtainable through June 13. You can sign up here, as well as find more information about the panels.