| Industry | NFC, Near-Field Communication |
|---|---|
| Founded | March 2007 |
| Headquarters |
Hong Kong, China
|
| Products | akami suite |
| Services | Front-end mobile platform for NFC services |
| Employees | 20 |
| Subsidiaries | Toro Development Europe sarl, France; Toro Turkey V.A.R. |
| Website | www.toro-intl.com |
Toro Development Ltd. (Toro Ltd. or Toro) was founded in March 2007 to address the very promising market of Near-field communication (NFC) services. The company focuses on the front-end part of NFC application development, including the distribution and management of NFC services. Toro provides the user-interface(UI.) corresponding to the NFC applications on the secure element(s) of the phone, and on non-secure NFC applications (marketing, CRM, etc.). For that matter, Toro has developed and continues developing an NFC Wallet Platform (akami suite) that is complementary to the systems developed by the Trusted Service Managers (TSMs), and that is necessary to seamlessly distribute NFC services to end-users. In the NFC value chain, this front-end module is described as an NFC User Management System. One of the modules of this NFC User Management System is a NFC Wallet.
Contents |
Toro’s product is akami suite , a front-end platform for NFC wallet application. This platform runs across smart card, NFC mobile phones, secure servers, and the Internet. akami suite is composed of several modules: a mobile client, a widget system, an application server, an SDK, and a series of plug-ins.
akami wallet is an NFC mobile wallet application (MIDlet for J2ME, or native for other mobile OS) that aggregates all the secure applications located on the secure element of a mobile. It brings back the UI. that application issuers lose when their application gets “dematerialized” (from a plastic card in a wallet, to a secure domain inside the SIM card). akami wallet is a runtime environment (or virtual machine, interpreter) that can host a widget system.
| OS platform | Availability |
|---|---|
| J2ME | June 2009 |
| Blackberry | Feb. 2010 |
| Android | May 2010 |
| Windows Phone 7 | Q2 2012 |
| iPhone | Q2-Q3 2012 |
| Bada | Q3 2012 |
Widget system[1]: akami wallet is dynamic thanks to its akami widget system; it has the ability to mesh and evolve with the TSMs’ services, and enable easy add/remove service operations.
Back-office for the management of mobile clients/widgets: akami manage allows the remote administration of the mobile client downloads, local and remote management of the akami widgets, management of the akami mobile versions depending on phone platforms (J2ME, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Blackberry, Android) and NFC phone models.
Software development kit for developers: Third party developers can us the akami SDK to develop akami widgets and host them in the application server fro distribution.
(1) Web interface for end-users: End-users need an easy and convenient access to NFC services. Toro develops interfaces for users to pick, sync and use the hundreds of applications that will soon be available to them.
(2) Smart posters: akami manage controls the smart poster iDs, and links them to a content hosted in the TSM server or in non-secure servers. Users can download coupons widgets and promotions from such smart posters.
| Name | Title |
|---|---|
| Laurent Renard | Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer |
| Gregory Puente-Castan | Co-Founder & Chief Technical Officer |
| José García Chico | Chief Mobile Software Architect |
| Arnaud Level | Chief Server Software Architect |
| Marcel Ficken | Directing Manager of Toro Turkey Office |