SOURCE: Mob4Hire

November 12, 2008 10:17 ET

Mob4Hire to Power Crowd Sourced Application Testing for O2 Litmus

O2's Litmus Community of Developers and Customers to Benefit From Mob4Hire's Application Testing

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA--(Marketwire - November 12, 2008) - Mob4Hire (www.mob4hire.com), the leader in crowd sourced, real world mobile application testing, today announced that O2 will implement the Mob4Hire technology into O2 Litmus, a community of O2 customers and developers brought together to test, cultivate and commercialize mobile applications.

O2 Litmus will directly connect innovative developers to an exclusive audience of tech-savvy O2 customers leveraging the crowd sourcing technologies from Mob4Hire to manage the process. Developers will be able to work collaboratively with O2 customers in order to speed their development time and lower testing costs, resulting in market-driven mobile applications based on the direct feedback from real O2 users.

"O2 Litmus is designed to marry innovative application developers with O2's tech-savvy customers. Mob4Hire's technology perfectly complements this model incentivizing both parties to collaborate. Developers gain direct insight from real customers, and our customers have early access to interesting apps. All parties see the benefit of field tested apps to build confidence within the O2 Litmus community," said James Parton, head of O2 Litmus.

How it works

Selected O2 customers will be invited to join the O2 Litmus community for the opportunity to test and purchase mobile applications for the handsets they already are using. O2 Litmus developers can tap into this community of O2 customers to experiment, test and debug applications, providing real time market research and customer insight.

Mob4Hire simplifies the testing process for O2 developers through O2 Litmus by managing the administration of the customer tests. Developers simply specify the handsets that they want their application tested on and Mob4Hire engages the O2 customer community asking them to bid on the test project(s). Once the developer accepts the bids the application is released to the O2 customer tester. The test plan is completed and sent back to the developer at which time the O2 customer tester gets paid.

"Mob4Hire is simplifying the testing and feedback process for O2 mobile developers, managing tens of thousands of customer testers and the related complexities of engaging the testers, brokering testing deals to managing the smallest details," said Paul Poutanen, president and founder of Mob4Hire. "With the Mob4Hire technology O2 Litmus truly becomes an invaluable tool for engaging real customers in the process of developing rich, user-friendly mobile applications for O2 subscribers present and future."

Interested parties are invited to sign up for more information on O2's Litmus here: http://www.o2litmus.co.uk/

About Mob4Hire

With over 1,300 handsets on more than 136 operators in 57 countries worldwide, Mob4Hire (www.mob4hire.com) is the leader in real world, crowd sourced, mobile application testing. Using Web 2.0 social networking, Mob4Hire significantly reduces mobile application testing costs and accelerates time to market by connecting developers with eager, lower priced, crowd sourced testers and focus groups. Founded in 2007, Mob4Hire was a Cambrian House Ideawarz winner and was recently named one of Backbone Magazine's top 20 Web 2.0 firms. Mob4Hire is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with offices in Victoria, British Columbia, and London, U.K. For more information, visit www.mob4hire.com.

About Telefónica O2

Telefónica O2 UK Limited is a leading communications company for consumers and businesses in the UK, with over 18.7 million mobile customers and over 190,000 fixed broadband customers as at 30 June 2008.

-- Telefónica O2 UK Limited is part of Telefónica Europe plc which is a business division of Telefónica S.A. and which owns O2 in the UK, Ireland, Slovakia, Germany and the Czech Republic, and has 43.8 million customers.

-- O2 is the naming rights partner of The O2, the world-class entertainment venue.

-- O2 was ranked the 6th best place to work in the Best Companies to Work for 2008 List and has been awarded a three-star accreditation denoting an 'extraordinary' company.

-- O2 was launched on 1 May 2002 and now has more customers than any other UK mobile network.

-- O2's UK mobile network covers 99% of the UK's population. O2's 3G network covers 80% of the UK population and is fully HSDPA-enabled, providing speeds of up to 1.8 MBps for customers with an HSDPA-enabled device.

For b-roll footage of O2, please visit http://www.digitalnewsagency.com/

For further press information about O2 go to http://mediacentre.o2.co.uk/