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Smith Micro Software: Safely Enjoy the Connected Life

David Sperling, CTO, Smith Micro SoftwareDavid Sperling, CTO
When teachers informed Nancy’s parents that their daughter left the school premises almost an hour ago, her mother panicked that she wasn’t home yet. After another 40 minutes, Nancy comes prancing through the door and begins sharing the adventures she and her friend had after school. All this time, Nancy’s parents agonized over her disappearance, unsure of where to search for her, and even contemplated informing the police.

Situations like this involving family and loved ones can easily be avoided. Smith Micro Software has designed an effective and innovative software solution—SafePath Connected Lifestyle—to help concerned family members stay informed of the whereabouts of their loved ones. Offered via network operators, this robust platform provides subscribers with an array of location, parental controls, and content filtering along with seamless access to consumer IoT devices. “Our software platform equips mobile operators and wireless service providers with a comprehensive, white-labeled mobile application solution to enhance their brand, and build strong value-added services for their customers,” explains David Sperling, Smith Micro’s CTO. For example, the SafePath platform powers the Safe and Found application for Sprint; “It’s Sprint’s brand and offering,” says Sperling, “but Smith Micro is the platform behind it.”

Introduced to simplify and enhance the digital lifestyles of mobile consumers, SafePath Connected Lifestyle is comprised of two core components: SafePath Family and SafePath IoT. The first component—SafePath Family—includes family locator services that equip users with the ability to monitor the whereabouts of the entire family, including children and the elderly. Users can have the ability to set up safety zones and geofences that automatically notify parents when they enter and leave these zones. SafePath Family also delivers strong parental controls that allow parents to set time limits on a child’s use of mobile devices, URL filtering to not allow inappropriate content to be seen, and the ability to specify age groups for using specific types of applications available.
“It’s truly a comprehensive gamut of parental controls for both inside and outside the home,” says Sperling.

Our software equips carriers with comprehensive, white-labeled mobile solutions to enhance their brand and build value-added services for their customers

SafePath IoT, the second component, extends the reach of families beyond just smartphones, bringing all of the cellular-enabled consumer IoT devices under a single user experience. SafePath IoT helps users to easily track all that is happening within the connected family digital lifestyle. “Not every IoT device is cellular-enabled; therefore, we are also focusing on integrating to the home as a unit. Offering a single pane of glass, so to speak, for managing not only the safety of the family, but different aspects of the home, such as garage door openers, locks, outside lighting, and more, facilitating a secure in-home and out-of-home experience,” he explains.

Smith Micro has a rich legacy as a software company tracing back to its inception in 1982. Developing carrier-grade software solutions, Smith Micro has gained a competitive edge working together with hardware manufacturers on all software aspects of their solutions. As such, the secret sauce to Smith Micro’s success lies in its unique competence both in working with device ecosystems and architecting carrier-grade platforms to deliver software to millions of consumers around the world. “Our capability to work with the hardware OEMs and build carrier-grade software specifically for mobile operators is a unique skill that is rare in the market today,” says Sperling.

The combination of robust and established VAS solutions along with a strong history of delivering marketable solutions to mobile operators allows Smith Micro to offer a product that can be sold to customers by a brand they trust. Furthermore, Smith Micro’s expertise with OEM device manufacturers and the flexibility to provide access to an ever-growing ecosystem of connected devices will help them continue to provide world leading value-added services solutions for mobile operators around the world and better meet the needs of the Digital Connected Lifestyle of their millions of customers.