By April Wilkerson
April is a Journal Record reporter in Oklahoma City. Contact her at 278-2849.
Posted: 10:31 PM Monday, July 19, 2010

Mike Eilts, president and CEO of Weather Decision Technologies in Norman, with his iMap technology. His company is moving toward mobile device content. (Brent Fuchs)

NORMAN – The weather – a favorite topic of conversation, an entertainment option or a factor in scheduling a day – continues to be a growing business opportunity for a local company.

Weather Decision Technologies, based in Norman, has built its 10-year company by providing weather content around the world to customers ranging from the media to utility companies to aviation. In the last few years, the company’s investment has been in the mobile space, an area where it expects huge growth in the next few years.

WDT recently contracted with NII Holdings Inc., a provider of mobile application services operating under the Nextel brand in Latin America, for its first international mobile partnership. WDT’s iMap widget for the Android phone should put its services in front of at least 1 million mobile device users in Latin America in the next few years, said Mike Eilts, president and CEO of WDT.

“Weather is the No. 1 piece of information on mobile devices,” Eilts said. “We believe we are the leading weather content company in the United States, so mobile is a very natural extension of getting content to the consumers.”

WDT’s initial business model for Latin America is to provide the iMap weather widget with a way to up-sell to an application that provides more weather information, Eilts said. The popularity of weather domestically is well-known because people, on average, use a mobile widget or app two or three times a week. But the international market is less sure because weather forecasts and radar data aren’t as widely available, he said. However, with WDT’s global forecasting capabilities, the Latin American opportunity is a good way to test the waters.

“Initially, we want to gain a lot of scale, and Android is just the first phone,” he said. “We don’t know yet if we can make a lot of revenue on this, but it’s a good step to go into Brazil, Mexico and Argentina.”

The arrangement is a bonus for NII Holdings as well because it stands to gain more phone usage and gets a better value proposition for its customers.

“We were impressed with the iMap widget and decided to launch the iMapMobile application as a pre-loaded feature of our first-generation Android device, the Motorola i1,” said Bob Ewald, vice president of product management for NII Holdings.

To grow the mobile device part of its business, WDT hired a team away from The Weather Channel and opened an office in Atlanta for development work. Mobile testing and marketing also is done at the Norman office.

Eilts said he expects mobile device content, in the next few years, will equal the Internet and subscription service components of WDT. The company already provides content to about 700 media websites, including most of Oklahoma’s major TV stations, and has worldwide customers in a number of industries.

WDT also is expanding its core capabilities, and the company’s “follow-me” technology has the potential to grow business significantly. Currently, mobile users can set a location for weather on their app, but the weather won’t “follow” the phone, Eilts said. That’s changing soon.

“Right now, your location is where your phone is at,” he said. “We had to go back in and change all our alerting capabilities to be able to move on the fly, but it’s been well worth the investment. We’ll launch very soon, and I think there will be significant traction in the marketplace.”

One such piece of technology with “follow me” capability is the Lifesafety application for the Android and iPhone. The application, now in the testing phase, serves as a weather radio with the same beeps and alerts as the traditional product. If people have the application, they have a weather radio in their pockets, he said.

“Not only can we save lives, but we can gain significant revenue from doing that nationally,” he said. “The market size of weather radios is very large, so we’re very excited about that capability.”

Eilts said WDT also is working on technology for the outdoor recreation industry, which would serve hikers, bikers, skiers and golfers. In addition, the company is working toward its technology being part of home security systems, so a homeowner’s alarm would go off if a tornado warning is issued.

“It’s an exciting time to be in the weather industry,” Eilts said.

WDT is a $10-million-a-year company, and Eilts estimates a $130 million infusion into Norman and the state because most of the company’s customers are external.