Recently we caught up with Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO of Funambol. myFUNAMBOL enables iPhone users to get mobile email on your phone, backup contacts and calendar over the air, and use contacts and calendars from desktop mail clients.

iPhone Matters: What is Funambol?
Funambol is the mobile open source company and is the leading provider of open source push email and PIM sync for consumers. Funambol is supported by a global community representing more than 1,000,000 downloads and 10,000 contributors in more than 200 countries.

iPhone Matters: What problem is it trying to solve for iPhone users?
Without Funambol software, iPhone users have two ways to get contacts on their device: 1) enter them manually; 2) use a cable to sync contacts from Outlook, Yahoo!, etc. Neither are convenient for migrating contacts from an older phone or for ongoing updates, especially for contact data such as email addresses that change frequently.

With Funambol’s mobile contacts iPhone app, a user can wirelessly access their contacts, synced from Outlook, Thunderbird, Evolution, web mail, even other mobile devices. For example, if someone is traveling and needs to access a contact not on their iPhone, they can easily go online with their iPhone, access Funambol’s portal and get their contact information within seconds.

iPhone Matters: Does it work with any devices from any carriers?
Funambol has the widest device compatibility of any mobile email and PIM provider because it is open source software. It supports more devices than any other provider of mobile email for consumers by supporting SyncML, Windows Mobile, Java ME and a variety of community and third party solutions such as BlackBerry and Palm PIM sync.

iPhone Matters: How simple is it?
It is extremely simple—what could be easier than viewing a list of your contacts and tapping one to view someone’s details or to call or email them? The Funambol iPhone mobile contacts app was designed to look and behave like the native apps on the iPhone so there is virtually no learning curve for using it.