When I speak with telecom industry insiders about the value that Carrier IQ providers to their customers (who?) it isn't clear. The only things I have heard from people who know the company is that they have "issues" and their data is "too expensive". I have tried to reach out to the company several times unsuccessfully to see about building a mutually beneficial relationship. One of my biggest "pet peeves" being a telecom industry outsider is the incestuous nature of protected carrier business relationships. As I see it the carriers are unwilling to look at open data source solutions to solving the problem and would rather spend 1000X more on a solution that might not return any more value than we do. In my view, the RF engineers are trying to protect their jobs at all costs and continue to create complicated stories that the marketing / business people can't comprehend.
From what I hear about their fancy mobile handset intelligence solution is that it provides quantifiable data that their customers can act on but are they really solving the problem better than we are? What is wrong with having actual customers log complaints where the network stinks for free. Carrier IQ probably thousands of handsets on the market that are generating data on their behalf that the consumer doesn't even know about. Its impossible to fill in all of the billions of places that have coverage gaps so shouldn't a smart carrier purchase data where their customers WANT it most. As you can see I am a reluctant supporter of applications that sit on the handset and eat up bandwidth, battery life and network bandwidth.
Bridgescale Partners recently led a a $12M series D round of financing for CarrierIQ a provider of mobile service intelligence solutions that use the mobile phone to give detailed metrics on service quality and usage. Mohr Davidow Ventures, Accel Partners, Charles River Ventures, Nauta Capital, and Intel Capital also participated in the round. If anyone can share customers or revenue history please post on the comments section below. However, here is a summary of their funding history which seems very elaborate considering the simple problem they are solving.
Total Funding - $42M
Series A, 8/06 $10M
Mohr Davidow Ventures
Accel Partners
Benchmark Capital
Series C, 1/09 $20M
Intel Capital
Presidio Ventures
Sumitomo Corporation
Series D, 6/10 $12M
Bridgescale Partners
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