Thumbplay News

-- Pablo Calamera Named Chief Technology Officer at Thumbplay --

NEW YORK – 1 March 2010– Pablo Calamera has been appointed to the newly-created role of Chief Technology Officer for Thumbplay, the leading mobile entertainment company in the U.S. Calamera joins Thumbplay from Apple^® Inc where he oversaw technology development for MobileMe^SM, a pioneering, cloud-based data-syncing product for iPhones^®, PCs and Macs^®. As of March 8, 2010, Calamera will be based in New York, reporting to Evan Schwartz, Thumbplay CEO and Co-Founder.

Calamera brings with him more than 25 years experience in PC, Mobile, set-top box and cloud-computing–this includes a total of 10 years at Apple, six years at Danger (acquired by Microsoft) and two with WebTV (also acquired by Microsoft). Calamera will have oversight of all technology initiatives for the company, including its recently launched Thumbplay Music. Thumbplay Music is a cloud-based service that provides unlimited, on-demand access to millions of songs and is now offered in the U.S. in Private Beta by invitation-only (http://music.thumbplay.com).

Commented Schwartz: “We are thrilled to have Pablo join our team. He has unique experience with Apple, Danger and WebTV in delivering and syncing content across multiple platforms for a scaled customer base. He has also managed major integrations with U.S. and international carriers; an area of ongoing strategic importance for us. Over the course of his career, he has done an extraordinary job of building state-of-the-art consumer products and services from concept to completion. Technological innovation is paramount to Thumbplay, and Pablo’s talent, experience and commitment to excellence will play a vital role in keeping us at the forefront of mobile entertainment offerings.”

Remarked Calamera: “Thumbplay has an incredible talent pool, and they have done a remarkable job in building robust, feature-rich services that deliver beautifully across multiple platforms. This is a very difficult thing to do, and I have been consistently impressed with the energy, smarts and creativity on display. I am greatly looking forward to working with Evan and the entire Thumbplay team to deliver against our very ambitious goals for the future.”

Calamera most recently served as Director of Apple’s MobileMe, a mass scale premium consumer service providing client/server solutions that are integrated into devices, operating systems and desktop applications. MobileMe supports millions of worldwide active users on a daily basis. Prior to Apple, from 2001–2006, he was the Senior Director of Service Engineering and Support for Danger Inc., where he lead the service engineering team for the first real consumer smartphone - the Sidekick. Before that, he was at NotifyMe Networks as CTO and Vice President of Engineering for a trailblazing voice alerting application service provider (ASP) which, for the first time, brought the dynamic/interactive power of the Internet to every telephone. He has also served in critical roles at AT&T Labs, WebTV Networks and also held previous positions at Apple early in his career.

Thumbplay’s latest offering, Thumbplay Music, is currently available on select BlackBerry^® smartphones and its companion app for PCs/Macs is available through a downloadable Adobe^®AIR^® version. Thumbplay Music is a next generation service, built by experts in mobile content delivery and will be available for BlackBerry, Android^™ and iPhone smartphones within the first quarter of 2010. Today, the service has more than 8 million tracks under license from EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group and more than 25,000 independent labels.

Thumbplay Inc., which enjoys sustained profitability, has an award-winning service centered on delivering millions of pieces of mobile content to 95 percent of U.S. devices among every major carrier. Thumbplay will leverage its existing network of more than 8,000 distribution partners to promote Thumbplay Music.

ABOUT THUMBPLAY

Thumbplay, Inc. is defining the mobile entertainment experience for U.S. consumers. Headquartered in New York City, Thumbplay was founded in September 2004 by Are Traasdahl and Evan Schwartz. Investors include Bain Capital Ventures, SoftBank Capital, i-Hatch Ventures, Redwood Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Meritech, Brookside Capital Partners and Cross Creek Capital. More information can be found at www.thumbplay.com or at m.thumbplay.com from a mobile phone.

Labels: press, press-release

posted by BusTed Love at 7:28 AM