Alberta Venture Magazine: Mob4Hire helps businesses sidestep the pain of mobile deployment

A great article explaining why Mob4Hire rocks! From Alberta Venture Magazine, October 2008 "The Next Wireless Wave."

"Here’s a quick look at what it takes to play in the world of mobile technology, via snapshots of four homegrown companies working to change the way the wandering world lives, works and spends.

Challenge one: make the mobile application work. It’s tougher than it sounds. Let’s say you code a nice little game of hangman and want to get it out to every hip on the planet. There’s not a carrier in the world that will let HangHip (patent pending) on their network unless the application has first been strenuously beta-tested – a mind-splitting process of testing and tweaking that every piece of commercial software must undergo before deployment.

Challenge two: there are more than 1,000 different mobile devices worldwide, two or three times that figure if you include regional model variations.

Think of Calgary-based Mob4hire as a beta-broker to the mobile world. Paul Poutanen, president and founder, explains Mob4hire’s technology as a “crowd-sourced mobile application-testing platform.” Basically, Mob4hire acts like an agency, collecting revenues to manage the delivery of beta-testing services provided by subcontractors. “You can’t really test code on one carrier’s network if you’re logged in on another, so you either have to send people there or find someone qualified who’s already in the right place to test,” says Poutanen. It’s a useful service offering to mobile applications developers because writing, compiling and deploying mobile code across a labyrinth of technology, regulations and grey-area market share ain’t easy, though Mob4hire is making it look that way. “We incorporated in September 2007,” says Poutanen. “Now, we have resources in 36 different countries and are working with eight major carriers.”

So, on the continuum of mobile applications commercialization, Mob4hire is building a home where it can help businesses sidestep the pain of mobile applications deployment."