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January 18, 2007
Smart Ball Startup From MyOrigo Founder
We just learned that Ball-IT Oy has raised funding from Finland's Aura Capital for its smart ball business. The deal actually closed a while ago but we only learned about it when we asked Johannes Vaananen, co-founder of the 15 month old company, to tell us a bit about his new startup earlier this month.
With an undisclosed amount of capital, Finland-based Ball-IT has developed a pingpong ball-sized Bluetooth-enabled remote control device for Windows and Mac applications.
Support for smartphone applications is next.
The Ball-IT device is not a direct desktop mouse replacement. "Rather it is a multi-purpose device," said Vaananen. Indeed, he sees consumers using it for motion-controlled gaming, interacting with 3D applications, surfing Internet and menus on Home Theater Personal Computers, and as a logging pedometer. It contains newfangled silicon accelerometers, magnetometers and pressure sensors (MEMS devices).
More details than these about the product were not provided as Vaananen said he is under NDAs with first customers. But products from an OEM should be available in the first half of the year, if it goes according to plan.
Readers familiar with the mobilephone market will know Vaananen as the founder and CTO of MyOrigo, a company that hit trade press headlines three or four years ago with its pioneering smartphone designs that enabled zooming, panning, and scrolling without a mouse, and simpler interactivity in general (see image left).
But innovative UI features have seen slow uptake by the world’s cellphone manufacturing companies -- just ask Tao Group, Surfkitchen and their peers how long it takes to win a contract -- and MyOrigo was acquired by US-based F-Origin, where Vaananen stayed unitl September 2005 when he left and teamed up Juha Rytky (CEO) to create Ball-IT.
The firm's business model involves both licensing the technology and its software to original equipment manufacturers (OEM), as well as manufacturing in partnership with an EMS partner for OEM's that in turn will handle sales channel logistics.
The Finnish startup has come quite far in a short time but making it big is going to be a challenge. We've seen companies like Anoto, also from the Nordic region, come to market with new ways to interact with computer applications, but it has struggled to get growth.
But unlike Anoto, Ball-IT is going beyond the PC. And there European startups have a better chance. The reportedly fast market uptake of France’s Nabaztag (also known as the WiFi bunny) from Violet SA (See Neteco link below), as well as the growth of TomTom on the back of GPS navigation gadgets, and Bluetooth gadget innovators, such as Parrot SA, has us thinking this way.
For techie a:c readers, you can get a software development kit that includes a Smart Ball to work with sometime in the first quarter from Ball-IT.
Read - Nabaztag doit montrer qu'il y a une vie après le PC (neteco)
Posted on January 18, 2007 10:44 AM | Posted to Early stage | Peripherals | Wearable Tech | Wireless | Permalink
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