Funambol, the mobile open source software company, will begin inviting consumers to join the new myFUNAMBOL portal to access free mobile e-mail, contacts, and calendars on everyday cell phones. myFUNAMBOL also provides the first over-the-air mobile contacts application for the new iPhone, which demonstrates the pace of innovation available with open source.

myFUNAMBOL is now available to users by invitation only. Users can get free mobile e-mail on their phones from consumer e-mail services such as Yahoo!, Gmail, and AOL, and from work e-mail using POP/IMAP. The portal includes an address book and calendar for bidirectional synchronization of contact and calendar data from e-mail clients such as Microsoft Outlook and Yahoo! Mail as well as over-the-air with mobile devices.

With this over-the-air mobile contacts application for the iPhone, users can access their myFUNAMBOL address book on their iPhone (that includes contacts from multiple sources) to place calls, send e-mail, and map locations with Google Maps. Moreover, myFUNAMBOL facilitates over-the-air migration from users’ old devices to their iPhones.

In addition to the iPhone, myFUNAMBOL supports 1.5 billion mobile devices, including the iPod and phones from Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and LG. myFUNAMBOL is not intended to be a substitute for other Internet portals or for wireless services, but is meant to demonstrate how open source can help 1.5 billion mobile users easily get mobile e-mail and PIM data on their mass market handsets.

Open source software often delivers new capabilities much faster than proprietary alternatives. With more than one million downloads of its software, Funambol has one of the largest open source communities, making its pace of innovation and product development unmatchable. This model is essential in a market where device compatibility is paramount and change is constant. Funambol supports SyncML, Windows Mobile, Java ME, and a variety of community and third-party solutions such as BlackBerry and Palm PIM sync.