Israeli financial newspaper Calcalist reports today that Brightstar, the world’s biggest mobile phones distributor, sold 500,000 devices in Southeast Asia with Tjat’s software components. The partnership between the companies was signed in the last mobile world congress on February 2008 and grants Tjat with royalties and monthly revenues from using its services. Tjat, an Israeli company, develops a “cloud” technology for multimedia devices that enables multimedia devices to access IM services, social networks, e-mail service, and more.

Tjat’s focus is on the low-cost mobile devices (under 50$) market and its solution is a lightweight, server centric solution that requires no installation on the Tjat enabled device. This approach requires fewer resources from the device and gives Tjat a strategic hold over the services used by the users. By being the services gateway, Tjat can charge the users according to their usage. Gartner predicts that 450 million low-cost devices will be sold annually in the coming years and Tjat aims to a market penetration of 25% of this market.

The services dispensing concept in various forms already exist in the market and lately was mentioned in the case of the new iPhone 3G. Nokia played the game with its games download service (which wasn’t a big success), Qualcomm’s BREW content system (that is supported by acquired Elata), and more. Usually the device manufacturers / distributors have small or no influence on the services market and only the marketing of the operator or a local service / content provider can be significant enough to attract users to the services. Although the focus is on low-cost phones, these phones still have internet access, and are capable of using other services or the same services directly with no costs (internet browsing, IM clients etc). Tjat will need to smartly develop services roadmap and other supporting business models to fit the future of the mobile content and services market.