The Irish
made their presence felt at Mobile World Congress 2015 (MWC), announcing multimillion-euro deals and partnerships. More than 30 Irish companies took part in the trade show and conference, including 18 Enterprise Ireland clients exhibiting at the agency's stand. Among the Irish businesses in attendance were Ding, Anam Technologies, Equiendo, Cubic Telecom, Openet, Xintec and Jinny Software.
Asavie announced a partnership with US software firm Zvelo to bring cost control to the mobile web. Asavie's Moda product allows companies to quickly and easily control what employees spend their mobile data on.
Brite:Bill announced a multimillion-euro deal for its online billing software with US telecoms company Sprint. The billing communications platform will be deployed by Sprint to manage the bills of its 56 million subscribers.
Brite:Bill said it will beef up its workforce by 100 over the next two years, and is set to move into new premises on Shelbourne Road in June. Seventy per cent of the jobs will be in Ireland, with the rest in international offices.
Online learning company Fishtree announced that it had raised $3 million (€2.7 million) in venture capital funding to expand its reach in the US market. Chief executive Terry Nealon said the company will double the size of its workforce, adding about 25 jobs in the next two years, with half of them in Ireland. He added that the company was hoping to launch its personalised learning platform in Ireland in the next three months.
The $3 million Series A funding round was led by New Markets Venture Partners, with participation from Recruit Holdings, ECMC, JISR and existing investors.
Speakers
founder and chief executive
Mark Zuckerberg
, Wikipedia founder and chief executive
Jimmy Wales
, Nissan-Renault chief executive
Carlos Ghosn
,
Intel
chief executive
Brian Krzanich
, Mastercard chief executive
Ajay Banga
and GSMA director general
Anne Bouverot
were among the speakers, but it was an Irishman, Michael O’Hara, who selected them all. As chief marketing officer for GSMA, O’Hara was tasked with selecting more than 250 speakers this year.
“We have a big list of who we want to speak,” he said. “It took us four years to get Mark Zuckerberg to Mobile World Congress. There was a lot of discussion with Facebook.”
O'Hara said he would like Amazon chief Jeff Bezos and Apple chief executive Tim Cook to speak at a future event. More on Mobile World Congress, Technology, pages 6-7
