Startup Cover bets on Android's market cloud:
A trio of veterans from Google, Facebook, and Yahoo tries to make Android phones more useful by anticipating the apps you want the moment you wake up a device. Something they couldn't do on iOS.
Many companies get their start on Apple's mobile market, but a start-up called Cover that's launching Thursday hopes to find profits from the increasingly powerful and widely used Android instead. The company's software, free and beginning closed beta testing Thursday, is designed to make it easier and faster to use the app you want when using Google's operating system.
Cover shows a six-item list of a person's most-used apps down the left edge of a phone's lock screen. Tapping one of the icons launches its app immediately, and sliding an icon toward the right lets you peek quickly at details of that app -- e-mail inboxes, city maps, calendar appointments, and so on. The app tries to anticipate what you'll need so you'll be one step closer to getting what you need on the phone.
A key part of the idea is contextual awareness. Cover figures out whether you're at home, at work, or on the road and changes its app list accordingly. It learns what apps you prefer in each location. And it also adjusts apps by circumstances such as plugging in headphones, which means you'll likely want music-related apps, or holding the phone in landscape orientation, which could mean you want to take a photo.
"We're trying to make it easier for people to get to the right apps at the right time," said company Chief Executive Todd Jackson, a Google and Facebook veteran who co-founded Cover. That chore is getting harder as people install and use more and more software hidden among endless grids of icons.
People with Android 2.3 or later can request access to the Cover beta version on the company's Web site. It's available for free, but the company hopes to make money through other means such as spotlighting new apps or promoting ones they've installed but not used. Another idea, Jackson said, is licensing the interface to smartphone makers.
The business case is compelling enough to attract $1.7 million in seed funding from: First Round Capital, Harrison Metal Capital, Max Levchin, Scott Banister, Charlie Cheever, Keith Rabois, Dave Girouard, and Alex Franz.
Jackson, along with co-founders Edward Ho and Gordon Luk, are betting not just on their idea, but on Android, too.
"Companies are still focused on iOS, but users are moving to Android," Jackson said. "I was at Facebook when the numbers crossed and there were more Android users than iOS users. It's never going back."
Cover therefore has tied its fortunes to those of Google's mobile OS. "Android is this tidal wave in terms of number of users and growth. It's not far-fetched to imagine that in a couple years there are going to be billions of Android users," he said. Attracting even a tiny fraction of those users means the company could still have 10 million users.
