Ignition Co-Founder Nakajima Leaves to Run
Software Company
By Hui-yong Yu
Bellevue, Washington, Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Ignition Corp., which finances
startup companies that develop software and services for wireless Internet
devices, said co-founder Satoshi Nakajima will leave to run a new company
developing game software for portable devices.
Ignition provided an undisclosed amount of seed funding for the startup and will
help it forge agreements with mobile phone operators and device
manufacturers, Nakajima said in an interview. The new company is called
UIEvolution Inc., for user interface evolution.
Nakajima was one of 10 former Microsoft Corp. and McCaw Cellular
executives who founded Ignition in March with $140 million in capital raised by
the founders and Qualcomm Inc., Softbank Venture Capital, and Madrona
Venture Group. Nakajima will be the chief executive of UIEvolution.
UIEvolution is developing Java-based software for devices such as mobile
phones, personal organizers, and handheld game machines, as well as for the
large computers known as servers that will run the programs. Once that's
completed, the company plans to approach wireless operators to distribute its
games.
The company expects its first revenue next year. ``It's going to take time,
especially in the U.S.,'' which lags Japan in adopting mobile phone
technology, Nakajima said. In Japan, there are 12.4 million users of mobile
phones equipped with NTT DoCoMo Inc.'s i-mode wireless Internet access
service, and some analysts expect the number to reach 15 million by year's
end. NTT DoCoMo plans to release a Java-enabled phone in December,
Nakajima said.
UIEvolution will begin with simple games such as chess and checkers and
could move on to trivia quizzes and eventually more advanced applications
such as e-mail and address books, Nakajima said. He said the company
might bundle several games and sell them for $1 a month. With the i-mode
service, content providers charge $1 to $3 a month and keep 91 percent of the
revenue, with the remaining 9 percent going to NTT DoCoMo.
``We don't know if can make that kind of deal. This business model is not
established in the U.S. yet,'' Nakajima said.
Nakajima said he got the idea for UIEvolution while writing programs in his
spare time at Ignition. He began writing game software as a high school
student in Japan two decades ago, where he built a program for creating
games that was used commercially. He said one of his early efforts was a
game based on the Clint Eastwood movie character ``Dirty Harry.'' |
