Jentro Technologies GmbH announced the launch of its new Zenlet platform to facilitate the rapid development and delivery of unique, relevant and rich location-based, social networking and vertical content mini-applications, called “Zenlets.”

These Zenlets can be accessed easily within a single client application on the mobile device – thus enhancing the personalized mobile Internet experience. This combined mobile browser and location-aware plug-in technology platform goes far beyond other widget platforms and further supports Jentro’s position as the leading provider of flexible mobility solutions. This will enable Jentro clients to use pre-packaged solutions, create a custom suite of applications out of Jentro’s Zenlet applications catalogue and to ultimately offer a customer-choice experience to the market, whereby the Zenlets can be pre-loaded on the mobile devices or with a “push of a button” delivered over-the-air with relatively low data transmission volume to increase customer satisfaction and usage.

The unique Zenlet engine – the plug-in container application – allows for the seamless delivery of content through platform-independent Zenlets to mobile phones, connected personal navigation devices (PNDs) as well as to in-dash computers. The Zenlet engine has a very small footprint, is available for Java ME, and will be available soon for Symbian OS and Windows Mobile platforms.

Jentro will offer the Zenlet engine as a white-label client application, where clients can brand the application with their brand name, logo, change the color scheme and icons to deliver a truly branded solution to their customers, optionally including maps, upgradeable with driving directions and/or GPS navigation.

“Our team has been working on a way to deliver pre-packaged solutions to the market that also allow for the flexibility to add unique content to an existing package, or create a new one, to meet the changing needs of our clients’ customers,” said Kate Edwards, Chief Executive Officer, Jentro Technologies. “The Zenlet platform enables rapid development and deployment of location-based content applications – a feature we believe differentiates us in the market and drives value for our clients looking to get a solution up and running in a relatively short period of time.”

Clients can develop their own applications to plug-and-play into the Zenlet platform using a Zenlet Software Development Kit (SDK) that Jentro will offer soon to developers and publishers to bring their content to millions of mobile users. Zenlets can be developed either using a powerful imperative Zenlet programming language similar to Java, or using an XML-based declarative Zenlet description language, developed in PHP, Perl, Python, C or C++. This allows the implementation of simple applications such as weather, local search and flight updates, as well as rich applications such as friends finder, fleet management and off-route hiking.

The Zenlet platform supports various APIs, such as a rich user interface, location experience (GPS, Cell ID, and/or WiFi), maps, directions, navigation, as well as mobile device capabilities such as telephony functions, messaging, camera and/or Bluetooth. The Zenlet platform includes an advertising proxy, as well as a payment/billing framework to offer ad-based free applications, transaction-based applications and subscription models.

“The Zenlet platform offers a huge advantage for handset and PND manufacturers to overcome the relatively long production cycles of their devices and to refresh and offer the trendiest location-aware mobile applications with the first launch of the pre-loaded container application over-the-air,” added Erno Hempel, Chief Technology Officer, Jentro Technologies.