Myriad Group is a Swisssoftware company in the mobile communications sector. Myriad delivers consumer applications, social media and messaging solutions, and embedded software to OEM's, mobile operators and pay TV providers. Myriad operates through three product divisions - Versy, Myriad Connect and Device Solutions. The company was established in 2009 by the merge of the companies Purple Labs and Esmertec. The two companies had mostly common owners, and the deal was executed so that Esmertec, a publicly listed company, acquired Purple Labs in exchange of shares of the company. The merged company has around 500 employees. The original Purple Labs was French, headquartered in Chambéry, and developed and marketed Linux-based software to mobile OEMs and ODMs. With its 2008 purchase of Openwave's mobile software suite, it owns the Openwavemobile browser, one of the most widely used mobile internet browsers. Over its history, the browser has been shipped in over 2.24 billion devices, as of the end of 2010. Esmertec was a provider of Java in-device engines and mobile services platforms, headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. As part of the new company structure, Myriad now also offers products and services for Mobile Operators, including:
The company was founded in 2001 by Jean-Luc Botto, Dennis O'Donovan, Sebastien Soyer and Jean-Marie Andre. Simon Wilkinson was appointed as chief executive officer in October 2007, shortly after the firm raised $14.5 million in venture capital funding. On June 30, 2008, Purple Labs acquired Openwave's mobile phone client software division, which develops browser and messaging client technologies, for $32 million. On July 31, 2008 the company agreed to acquire Sagem Communication's mobile phone software and associated engineering teams. On 16 April 2012 the company expanded further with the acquisition of Synchronica plc. In September 2012, James Bodha, Mike Grant and Gary Bunney were appointed as co-CEO until a new full-time CEO had been found. Stephen Dunford was appointed as Myriad's new Chief Executive Officer on 4 December 2012.
*MFS+: addresses the challenge of low bank subscription rates in emerging markets with m-Payments, m-Money transfers and m-Banking.
Device Solutions products:
*Myriad Alien Embedded: Android Runtime Environment enabling the execution of Android applications on non-Android platforms.
*Myriad Jbed Advanced: Java ME platform that enables consumer electronic device manufacturers to build, deploy and run Java applications seamlessly on any kind of communication device.
