FOTA Vendor innoPath Launches mobileMD, Drives Self-Care Capabilities for Mobile Phones

innoPath Software was - and for the most part still is, what we used to refer to as a FOTA (Firmware Over the Air) player in our old school days of mobility, when feature phones still ruled the roost as the advanced devices of choice, and when most smartphones were powered by Symbian and their domination of the market was but a gleam in our eyes. Those were the days.

Others in this space include Red Bend - which has since focused much of its attention on the idea of smartphone virtualization and mobile device management (MDM). Still others have been acquired by such giants as Hewlett-Packard, never to be heard from again. innoPath’s customer base includes Verizon, KDDI, China Telecom, Tata DoCoMo, LG, Nokia, and Samsung, which directly reflects its FOTA mobile roots.

Both Red Bend and innoPath allow carriers and device manufacturers to quickly deliver firmware updates to mobile devices over the air, allowing carriers and device makers to transparently update phone capabilities or fix problems with firmware. Carrier customer call centers can also quickly tap into mobile devices over the air to both diagnose and fix device problems quickly.

In the same manner that Red Bend branched out to virtualization-based MDM, innoPath has recently branched out as well, though innoPath remains closer to its roots. To do so innoPath today launched a new service that it has dubbed mobileMD. No, it is not a healthcare mobile app, but the "MD" is still relevant - it refers to device preventative care. Rather it is a new service that allows users (or perhaps carrier subscribers may be more accurate) to get up close and personal with their devices so that they can self-diagnose and fix problems with them "at the click of a button" as innoPath puts it.

The idea is to completely bypass the carrier call center entirely - the goal is to save the subscriber the chore of going through customer support (we all know how much we hate doing that, even when customer support is of the highest quality) and to save carriers the substantial expense (in both dollars and time) related to subscribers doing so. The goal for mobileMD is to provide a platform in which smartphones get smart care. The accompanying marketing spin, of course, is that such a thing will provide subscribers with an outstanding experience that will make them happier with their carriers and improve customer satisfaction scores.

With mobile MD mobile operators are now able to empower subscribers to:

• Manage their own device care, immediately reducing calls to customer support centers.
• Run diagnostics to identify problems and implement immediate fixes.
• Run extended test scans to identify any significant hardware or software issues.
• Schedule test scans and implement on-going device maintenance.

There is much more to it however, as the mobileMD platform and service also delivers all of the capabilities necessary to solve problems. These capabilities include OTA updates (of course), real-time diagnostics, and carrier-side analysis and contextually-aware tools when required. In addition, innoPath has partnered with Symantec to tap into Symantec's mobile application analysis capabilities.

The latter is important in that it will allow users to be able to scope out if any problem a user is experiencing is not at all hardware or firmware related but rather related to mobile apps that are installed on the smartphone.  Symantec software does a good job on this end of things and we wouldn't be surprised if it proved to be the single most valuable thing within mobileMD in the long run.

We do need to point out that the Symantec capability is currently only supported on Android devices - but since Android is the chief smartphone malware culprit by a huge margin, it is a good thing it is Android that is in fact supported. Symantec of course will not only deliver back-end mobile application analysis technology, but will also gain the opportunity to recommend Norton mobile products such as Norton Mobile Security and Norton Mobile Utilities to subscribers.

We have to confess that we do not in fact actually recall ever having to call our AT&T customer care center to fix any problems with either our old BlackBerry devices or our current iPhones. But apparently many people do. It is a good thing to guard against Android malware so more power to mobileMD either way.