Japanese operator SoftBank has selected Red Bend Software to provide over-the-air software updating and device management for more half of its summer line-up of mobile phones. Softbank will use Red Bend’s vRapid Mobile and vDirect Mobile software to deliver new firmware updates over the air (FOTA) and provision new services to mobile consumers consistently across multiple platforms.
Red Bend’s mobile software management solution is available for SoftBank consumers in 10 summer models from Sharp and NEC. The phones will provide many new and updated services and features, including a Twitter widget.
The handsets join a growing list of mobile devices featuring Red Bend’s software. In the first quarter of 2010, Red Bend’s software products were embedded in 70m mobile phones, machine-to-machine (M2M) modules, mobile Internet devices (MID), USB modems and WiMAX chipsets, bringing the company’s total shipments to 750m. Nearly one in four mobile handsets shipped in the quarter was Red Bend-enabled, making it the company’s strongest quarter ever for deploying its mobile software management solutions. 
Red Bend’s vRapid Mobile FOTA solution enjoys a 64 per cent worldwide market share for FOTA-enabled handsets, according to Ovum. It enables service providers and device manufacturers to update mobile phone software quickly and cost-effectively by identifying the essential changes from an existing version of firmware to a new, updated version; reducing the new updated firmware to a compact package, up to 97 pe rcent smaller than can be achieved through other techniques, to enable efficient over-the-air delivery; installing the new firmware; and installing new updates and features in the background while the consumer continues using the phone.
Red Bend’s vDirect Mobile solution works with any Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) device management (DM) server. It delivers provisioning, configuration, device information retrieval and security to meet expanding requirements for mobile software management, and according to Red Bend, is proven across multiple platforms, operating systems and memory types on feature phones, smartphones, WIMAX devices and M2M modules.
