Smith Micro Software, Inc., founded in 1982 by William W. Smith, Jr., is a developer and marketer of both enterprise and consumer-level software and services. Headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Smith Micro maintains multiple domestic and international offices.

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

locations include

Aliso Viejo, California Aliso Viejo (Spanish for "Old Sycamore") is a city in the San Joaquin Hills of southern Orange County, California. It had a population of 52,176 as of the 2020 census, up from 47,823 as of the 2010 census. It became Orange County's 34th city ...

, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. International offices are located throughout

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

and

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

. Currently, the company focuses on digital lifestyle solutions and security technologies, and is integrated into the evolving wireless media industry, as indicated by partnerships with cellular service providers such as

Verizon Wireless Verizon is an American wireless network operator that previously operated as a separate division of Verizon Communications under the name Verizon Wireless. In a 2019 reorganization, Verizon moved the wireless products and services into the div ...

,Verizon Wireless Chooses Smith Micro Technology to Support New VZAccess Manager
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AT&T AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...

, and

Sprint Corporation Sprint Corporation was an American telecommunications company. Before being acquired by T-Mobile US on April 1, 2020, it was the fourth-largest mobile network operator in the United States, serving 54.3 million customers as of June 30, 2019. Th ...

, now owned by T-Mobile US after the Sprint & T-Mobile merger in April 2020.

Corporate history

Smith Micro's initial focus was on

dial-up Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telepho ...

modem The Democratic Movement (, ; MoDem ) is a centre to centre-right political party in France, whose main ideological trends are liberalism and Christian democracy, and that is characterised by a strong pro-Europeanist stance. MoDem was establis ...

and

fax Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other out ...

software technology, distributing predominantly to OEM computer software/hardware manufacturers. Smith Micro established an

IPO An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

in 1995, and became publicly traded in the

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...

under the symbol SMSI. Initial stock values were approx. $12.75 per share. As the company entered the 90's, dial-up internet was quickly being replaced by cable internet, DSL, and wireless

broadband In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide-bandwidth (signal processing), bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Inter ...

due to substantially higher speeds and increased reliability. This change led Smith Micro to venture into wireless and mobile network software. Network connection management became an expertise of the company and, Smith Micro quickly developed products of interest to large-scale

mobile network operators A mobile network operator (MNO), also known as a mobile network provider, mobile network carrier, mobile , wireless service provider, wireless carrier, wireless operator, wireless telco, or cellular company, is a telecommunications provider of se ...

such as

Bell Canada Bell Canada (commonly referred to as Bell) is a Canadian telecommunications company headquartered at 1 Carrefour Alexander-Graham-Bell in the borough of Verdun, Quebec, in Canada. It is an ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier) in the province ...

Orange Orange most often refers to: *Orange (fruit), the fruit of the tree species '' Citrus'' × ''sinensis'' ** Orange blossom, its fragrant flower ** Orange juice *Orange (colour), the color of an orange fruit, occurs between red and yellow in the vi ...

, Sprint,

T-Mobile T-Mobile is the brand of telecommunications by Deutsche Telekom Deutsche Telekom AG (, ; often just Telekom, DTAG or DT; stylised as ·T·) is a partially state-owned German telecommunications company headquartered in Bonn and the largest telec ...

Verizon Verizon Communications Inc. ( ), is an American telecommunications company headquartered in New York City. It is the world's second-largest telecommunications company by revenue and its mobile network is the largest wireless carrier in the ...

, and

Vodafone Vodafone Group Public Limited Company () is a British Multinational company, multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates Service (economic ...

. While fax and modem-related products were still a part of their portfolio, the QuickLink Platform of wireless connection managers became a primary source of revenue in the early 2000s. By 2005, Smith Micro acquired

Allume Systems Allume Systems was a software developer, founded in 1988 by David Schargel and Jonathan Kahn in New York City as Aladdin Systems to develop, publish and distribute software for personal computers. Aladdin Systems was incorporated in January 19 ...

and their

StuffIt StuffIt is a discontinued family of computer software utilities for archiving and compressing files. Originally produced for Macintosh, versions for Microsoft Windows, Linux (x86), and Sun Solaris were later created. The proprietary compression ...

data compression software. Soon after, Smith Micro acquired Israel-based image editing company, PhoTags. Smith Micro followed with two more acquisitions, (e frontier America and busineSMS.com Software.) By acquiring these smaller companies, Smith Micro rapidly expanded its consumer business presence, however the company retained focus on network and wireless-related products. In early 2008, the company began to expand its portfolio with the addition of wireless access and mobile services. Smith Micro introduced multiple solutions for enhanced mobile communications, such as push-to-talk software, visual voicemail services, and video streaming. Smith Micro also expressed interest in

WiMAX Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) is a family of wireless broadband communication standards based on the IEEE 802.16 set of standards, which provide physical layer (PHY) and media access control (MAC) options. The WiMA ...

broadband, a newly developed cellular technology which was considered to be a 4G wireless protocol and the replacement of current 3G cellular systems. In 2019, Smith Micro entered the retail technology space with its acquisition of ISM Connect, LLC’s Smart Retail product suite. Most recently, the company has continued to expand its family safety business through the acquisitions of Circle Media Labs’ operator business in February 2020, and the Family Safety Mobile Business of Avast Software s.r.o in April 2021.

Products

Family safety

* SafePath **SafePath Home **SafePath IoT **SafePath Family **SafePath Drive

Communications

* CommSuite VVM (Visual Voicemail) ** CommSuite VTT (Voice to Text) ** CommSuite Cloud **CommSuite Caller

Smart Retail

*ViewSpot **ViewSpot Studio (Retail Display Management) ** ViewSpot Dynamic Pricing Portal **ViewSpot Retail Analytics

Major acquisitions

References

{{reflist, refs=7 Companies based in Aliso Viejo, California Companies based in Pittsburgh Software companies based in California Software companies based in Pennsylvania Companies listed on the Nasdaq Software companies established in 1982 American companies established in 1982 1982 establishments in California 1995 initial public offerings Software companies of the United States