Current status (roadmap, progress, number of users): Right now there are more than 3,2 million contacts from thousands of user from all over the world uploaded on ZYB + 1,3 million events. We have been live a bit more than 5 months and have established ourselves as the standard for free and easy-to-use mobile data backup. During the next couple of months we will launch services that will bring the data alive. The users can use their data to better manage their social life and share content etc.
We are currently signing partner-deals with operators all over Europe and in Asia – the first deal with E-Plus in Germany was announced on Dec 5. The service will always be open for all users regardless of operator. The partnerships are used by the operators for co-branding and giving their users a service they have been looking for in ages.
Here are 4 questions Tommy Ahlers CEO, Co-Founder to Zyb’s :
Can you tell us more about your service ?
Our plan is to bring the data from mobiles online – and alive. The service is based on open standards (SyncML) which makes it very easy to get started and works on more than 300 different mobiles. We believe that backup of contacts, calendar etc. should be very easy and completely free – it’s a commodity. That’s the status of the service right now. However, ZYB is much more than just a backup. The people that just want to have a backup and manage their mobile online can do that. But for the others we will offer services based on their date. These services will cover everything from football-schedules and family-plans in the mobile calendar to social community based on the contacts uploaded.Already now users can ask their friends to update their contact details directly in the ZYB-users mobile. Users can also share contacts and calendars and import from Google Calendar.
What is your business model ?
We will start offering premium services during Q1. The backup will be free forever. These premium services will include Outlook integration, SMS from web, full SMS-sync etc.
What are the projects, additional features you’re preparing ?
Backup of SMS, rich media backup, social community, public calendars. Users should look out for ZYB – a lot of things will happen soon.
What are the current users’ feedback, your learnings on the service’s usage?
Our users are very positive about how easy it is to sign-up and how user-friendly the sign-up is. Some users are only using it for the backup but already now a significant part of the user is managing their contacts and calendars via ZYB and logs in on a daily basis. The service where others can update their contact details directly in a users mobile is getting quite popular.