CES: CallSpark seeks carrier takeover of mobile search

In the war for mobile search, most have ceded the battle to some combination of industry giants Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) or even Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO), but startup CallSpark is using this week’s Consumer Electronics Show to show them why they’re wrong. Carriers – if they’re aggressive – will be the leaders in mobile search, according to CallSpark chief operating officer Steve Larsen.

“Much of what you need to win in mobile search is in the hands of the mobile operator and other players in telephony infrastructure,” Larsen said. “These are large companies who will fight hard to protect the value they’ve created. They won’t allow what the publishers had happen to their classified ad business happen to their mobile ad business.”

While most carriers already have relationships in place with the PC-search leaders, Larsen is hoping they’ll see a need for a more advantageous, lucrative search partner as well. CallSpark was launched at last fall’s DEMO show to add social media and context to search through GPS and relevance rankings. Larsen, who includes CitySearch, AT&T and a venture capitalist firm on his resume, outlined six key features of mobile that makes its search unique from the PC: varied information sources, knowledge of location, time, call history and social networks and its action-oriented nature. The ‘x factor’ that all these traits have in common is the carriers that own and control this information, he said.

“If you are at home entering the term ‘rental car’ or ‘Hertz’ from your desktop on a Sunday, you are probably searching for rates on an upcoming trip,” Larsen said. “If you put ‘rental cars’ or ‘Hertz’ on your mobile phone at 1 a.m. at the Miami airport, you likely need a car right then. That’s how mobile search is so much different than what you do in front of a computer.”

CallSpark integrates with a user’s social cloud, including sites such as Facebook, Salesforce.com, Yelp, LinkedIn and even contacts buried in emails. When a user searches for a name or business, the app lists results pulled from all these sources and ranked by relevance, past history and location. The service is currently offered as a free application on the iPhone, Android and through Research In Motion – platforms that the company will be demoing at CES. On RIM in particular, the service is built into the phone’s dialer as an additional set of numbers when the user goes to search.

Through CallSpark, businesses, or essentially anyone with a phone number, can also create a Ring Page that displays the information that person wants a user to see when they call. For an individual, it might take the form of their social networks – latest tweets, Facebook status or even their location if that person chooses to share it. For a business, it could be pertinent information, including the most frequently asked questions to cut down on costly customer-service calls.

Larsen’s call for carrier action stems from the startup’s own ambitions as well. Although it has seen success as a mobile app, the service has a much stronger chance of surviving if it has the carriers’ backing, their user base and their coveted on-deck placement. Larsen’s promise is that a service like CallSpark can immediately increase ARPU by up to $25 and stop erosion from users who go to Google Maps by prioritizing carrier’s directory listings. Larsen said the company is in the contract stages with several carriers – a large Asian carrier being the farthest along – and is in talks with several others.

“On a mobile phone, when I type pizza, I’m getting ready to order a pizza,” Larsen said. “You can monetize that ad in terms of dollars-per-click, per thousands of impressions. The opportunity here is a multibillion-dollar business. It’s a very significant amount of money; it’s a really big deal. This could dwarf the monetization done around online search. That’s why people are fighting over this so dramatically.”