The VCs See Something in Savaje

Mobile Java OS company Savaje raised another $40 million in December 2005. We thought we had seen this release before, so we did a bit of checking. Near as we can tell this is the Savaje funding history:

1999-2003 $12M
2003 $17.5M
2004 $40M
2005 $40M

Total $109.5 M

That is a lot of money for a product entering a maturing mobile OS market with lots of competition. The company is on version 2.5 of the OS and to date has not one deployed product. Good Sense PDA is expected to release the first handset shortly and LG has shown a Savaje powered phone.

My point here is not to stick it to Savaje. Just to point out that the VCs must see something here. Perhaps it is the potential for Savaje to be another Symbian. Remember how long it took that company to gain any momentum?

In 2004, the last year of data VDC has collected, Symbian did $114 million. In the first half of 2005 Symbian shipped more phones than in all of 2004. Also in the first half of last year the installed base of Symbian phones 39 million units. Of course, Symbian has Nokia.