Those who had listened to Rudy De Waele’s presentation on mobile 2.0 at Plugg learned about many promising startups in the mobile world, not the least of which is : Modu.
Modu was founded by Dov Moran, a successful israeli entrepreneur (who’s sold his previous business, M-Systems, to SanDisk for $1.6B). Dov now wants to take on the mobile phone market. Modu is a modular concept where the ‘core’ system can be fitted into a number of ’skins’ that provide additional functionality.
Modu had already raised $20M (from SanDisk, Genesis Partners, and Gemini Israel Funds), but this time is said to be about to raise $100M on a reported pre-money valuation of $150M. Michael Arrington at TechCrunch comments that this is a large dilution for such amounts. But then of course it is a very tough business to enter, where you can count your competitor on your fingers, and they are called Nokia, SonyEricsson, Motorola, etc.
The very concept of ’skins’ is already popular (to some extent) for spectacles, or some mobile phones, but Modu goes much further : some skins will bring completely different screen, keyboard, user interface and features (from music player to PDA), to the extent that one could wonder whether bringing the ‘core’ from one to another even makes much sense from an economic point of view (the GSM module itself is not an outrageously expensive part).
This will be a very interesting game to follow : if Modu succeeds in changing consumer habits, it might well become the ‘Swatch’ of the mobile business.
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