Franklin Davis

Current

Sr. Business Development Manager at Nokia

Past

Strategic Business Development at Nokia
Head of S60 Browsing BizDev at Nokia
Head of Browsing Core Apps & Technologies at Nokia

Senior Technical Marketing Manager, Software Architect at Nokia
Principal Software Engineer, Advanced Development at Nokia
Product Manager, Software Developer at Continuum Software, Inc (then Links2Go.com)
Product Manager at Continuum Software
Product Manager, OMF Interchange at Avid
Product Manager at Avid Technology
Technical Marketing Manager at Thinking Machines
Software Developer at Thinking Machines Corporation
Technical Staff at University of Bern
Technical Staff, CS / Applied Math department at University of Berne
Programmer at CAD Systems AG
Programmer II at Computervision Corporation

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12 more...

Education

Wang Institute of Graduate Studies
Oberlin College
Carnegie Mellon University

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Recommended

8 people have recommended Franklin

Connections

500+ connections

Industry

Telecommunications

Websites

My Company

Franklin Davis’s Summary

I am passionate about enabling people to find information and services. Currently working in the mobile Internet, I want to make mobile access to the Web so interesting, easy, and valuable that people will use it to improve their lives and communication.

By 2015 I believe the Web will be in everyone's pocket, and access to most of human knowledge will be nearly universal -- including the billions who have never seen a computer and whose first and only Web access will be on a phone. Web 2.0 will pale compared to Mobile Web 2.0. Will it happen by 2013? 2011?

I'm convinced that infotainment will be the biggest mobile data application -- fillling the gaps in busy lives when people are mobile -- followed by social, search/reference/information, and business uses. Location is key.

Generally interested in emerging mobile Internet applications and innovations. What is possible? What will matter to people? What will be engaging, fun, or important?

I balance the technical (defining architecture, requirements, usability, the small details that make the software experience flow) with creativity and communication (connecting people and ideas to move interesting ideas forward).

Franklin Davis’s Specialties:

Business: Envangelist for Mobile Web. Expert on full text search.

Technical: software architecture, mobile data, mobile Web, Web technologies and browsers, XML. Full-text search, service discovery.

Franklin Davis’s Experience

Sr. Business Development Manager

Nokia

(Public Company; NOK; Telecommunications industry)

January 2007 — Present (2 years 7 months)

Responsible for discovering and driving new technologies and business initiatives into Nokia's S60
smartphone software platform, focused on 3+ years horizon. Includes partnering, in-licensing, M&A.
Strategic Business Development

Nokia

(Public Company; NOK; Telecommunications industry)

January 2007 — December 2007 (1 year)

As part of Strategic Business Development I am in a team responsible for driving new business initiatives into Nokia's software platform. Includes partnering, in-licensing and M&A.
Head of S60 Browsing BizDev

Nokia

(Public Company; NOK; Telecommunications industry)

January 2005 — December 2007 (3 years)

Global responsibility for working with 3rd parties to build a rich mobile browsing ecosystem. Initial targets included integrating 3rd party tools for mobile content creation, accelerating mobile browsing with speed proxies, and partnering with top Web sites to create the first mobile RIAs.
Head of Browsing Core Apps & Technologies

Nokia

(Public Company; NOK; Telecommunications industry)

August 2002 — December 2004 (2 years 5 months)

Created Nokia's strategy to move from WAP to True Web on mobile, then drove the decision to adopt the WebKit open source browser engine rather than build our own or license a proprietary browser. S60 WebKit was one of Nokia's first uses of OSS in products, and its biggest success to date.
Senior Technical Marketing Manager, Software Architect

Nokia

(Public Company; NOK; Telecommunications industry)

January 2000 — July 2002 (2 years 7 months)

Responsible for technical interactions related to browser with US operators, especially AT&T and T-Mobile. Responsible for all technical interactions with prospective OEM customers of embedded mobile software technology, especially browser. Drove product requirements with input from customers, competitive analysis, product management, and product development. Created strategies for winning in competitive mobile browser market.
Principal Software Engineer, Advanced Development

Nokia

(Public Company; NOK; Telecommunications industry)

May 1999 — December 1999 (8 months)

Designed and implemented wireless internet applications using WAP. Developed hands-on sales demos to introduce customers to WML.

Created Nokia XML Knowledge Center, a "center of excellence" for coordinating XML-based projects.
Product Manager, Software Developer

Continuum Software, Inc (then Links2Go.com)

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Telecommunications industry)

April 1997 — May 1999 (2 years 2 months)

Single-handedly designed, implemented, tested and documented three-tiered web applications SideClick.com and Bookmarks2Go.com for Switchboard.com, working with Mark Canon. Implemented in Microsoft IIS, ASP, VB and C++ COM components, SQL Server with ADO, Microsoft Transaction Server and DTC, integrated with proprietary UNIX back-end search engine and server. Developed marketing strategy and worked with partner company Switchboard.com for deployment and rollout.

SideClick was a topic-based web exploration tool, structured like Yahoo!, but the database was constructed automatically. Bookmarks2Go provided online "roaming" bookmarks/ favorites. Automatically suggests folder names for new bookmarks. Shows up to 50 suggested sites related to bookmarks saved in a folder.

Designed & developed web-based authoring tool scauthor.switchboard.com enabling 3rd parties to customize SideClick and Bookmarks2Go.
Product Manager

Continuum Software

(Telecommunications industry)

1997 — 1999 (2 years)
Product Manager, OMF Interchange

Avid

(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; AVID; Computer Software industry)

August 1994 — March 1997 (2 years 8 months)

Responsible for making OMF Interchange an industry standard (for exchanging digital film/video editing data). Led a group of 7 in engineering and marketing, evangelizing and standardizing this multimedia data format.
Product Manager

Avid Technology

(Public Company; Telecommunications industry)

1994 — 1997 (3 years)
Technical Marketing Manager

Thinking Machines

(Privately Held; 501-1000 employees; Computer Hardware industry)

September 1987 — March 1994 (6 years 7 months)

Responsible for strategy, requirements specification, technical marketing, reporting to VP of Business Applications, John Mucci.

Managed 7 engineers developing parallel relational database system for CM-5 massively parallel supercomputer. Established partnership with 3rd party to supply SQL and client/server interfaces. Decision/SQL was the only system to complete the entire benchmark for large telco at >100GB. Reported to Director of Business Apps, Robert Millstein.

Developed massively parallel full-text search system on CM-2 for Dow Jones.

Worked with Brewster Kahle to create WAIS, the first distributed online search system. Defined detailed protocol, managed team to build first WAIS client on Macintosh.
Software Developer

Thinking Machines Corporation

(Privately Held; 501-1000 employees; Computer Hardware industry)

September 1987 — March 1994 (6 years 7 months)
Technical Staff

University of Bern

(Educational Institution; 1001-5000 employees; Higher Education industry)

January 1985 — May 1986 (1 year 5 months)

Sponsored student projects: Robot Anti-Collision System, using CAD model; Database for Technical Report Listings. Designed network email tool.
Technical Staff, CS / Applied Math department

University of Berne

(Telecommunications industry)

1985 — 1986 (1 year)
Programmer

CAD Systems AG

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Computer Software industry)

April 1984 — December 1984 (9 months)

Developer on “ITS-100” CAD system. Increased overall system performance 50%.
Programmer II

Computervision Corporation

(Public Company; 501-1000 employees; Computer Software industry)

September 1981 — March 1984 (2 years 7 months)

Developer on “CADDS-4X” system. Project lead for Hidden-Line Removal. Designed and implemented data structures and database functions for a new CAD/CAM application. Speeded up CADDS-4X database layer by 30%.

Franklin Davis’s Education

Wang Institute of Graduate Studies

MSE , SW Engineering , 1984 — 1985

Concentration on relational database systems internals, operating systems.
Oberlin College

1977 — 1981
Carnegie Mellon University

1976 — 1977