LongBoard Inc. is the latest fixed-mobile convergence startup to engage in a little bit of the ol' CEO shuffle.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based firm has replaced its existing head, Gary Tauss, with J.D. Howard, the former director of
Lucent Japan.
At first glance, Howard looks to be an obvious choice to extend LongBoard's reach in the Asia-Pacific arena, a market it is already heavily involved in. Besides Lucent, Howard has also worked for
Nortel Networks Ltd. (NYSE/Toronto: NT).
But a spokeswoman for the firm says that LongBoard, which weathered the telecoms implosion by turning to Asia, is looking further afield.
"One thing to keep in mind is that typically speaking, the Asian markets have been the first to investigate and deploy technologies like this, so they've been the early adopters of LongBoard's technology," she says. "The company is currently in trials with European operators and is definitely thinking globally in terms of strategy."
LongBoard has recently got into the mobile convergence game though its OnePhone application. This manages the handoff between wireless LAN networks and cellular networks by monitoring the relative signal strength of each network and sending this information back to an application server.
The firm has wasted no time getting in on a key trend for startups in this market: Get a new CEO. As
Unstrung reported last week,
Kineto Wireless Inc. has also just made the switcheroo (see
Kineto Cuts CEO).
We'll just have to wait and see what happens at other startups in this market, like
Azaire Networks Inc.,
BridgePort Networks Inc., and
NewStep Networks.
— Dan Jones, Site Editor,
Unstrung
