Conveneer, a provider of technology that enables content on mobile phones to be accessed like a Web site, has secured $4.5 million in financing.

The round was led by Industrifonden, a Swedish foundation that invests primarily in growth companies, and included Broken Arrow Venture Capital, an early-stage investment firm. The funding will be used to continue development of Conveneer's Mikz platform, expand the management team and increase the company's sales and marketing in the United States to support its commercial launch later this year.

"What we want to do is to fully prove the Conveneer service and launch it in the market with both handset companies and wireless carriers," said Tom Barton, general partner at Broken Arrow Venture Capital.

"If we get that far in this round -- at least 18 months -- we can get into a full production schedule with handset manufacturers and carriers," he said.

As the features and functionality of mobile phones continue to explode, people are increasingly using these devices to store personal information such as photos, videos, music and their primary address books.

Until now, accessing this information other than directly from the phone has been a challenge, requiring either physical cable synchronization or some kind of slow, periodic sync and upload solution.

Conveneer claims that it is providing consumers -- for the first time -- real-time access to phone content using a standard Web browser or any Web application.

Conveneer's Mikz platform offers connectivity to mobile phones over standard Internet protocols, using an intelligent overlay network.

It works by assigning a URL to the mobile phones, enabling the phone to be accessed by typing the URL into any Web browser.

Phone content can be seamlessly integrated with Internet-based data using standard, open APIs such as RSS and HTML and various Web services.

Conveneer is currently working with handset manufacturers, wireless carriers and various application developers to launch its initial product suite.

Conveneer was founded in 2006 and is led by telecommunications and wireless industry veterans.

CEO Christer Bjork was the founder of Teleca's mobile application suite Obigo, which has been shipped in more than 300 million mobile phones worldwide.

Chairman Örjan Johansson was director and general manager of Bluetooth technology and products for Ericsson.

Industrifonden offers capital, expertise and a network of contacts to Swedish growth companies in a variety of industries. It provides two types of capital: development capital for innovative tech startups and expansion capital for more mature companies that want to grow.

Broken Arrow Venture Capital provides funding for entrepreneurs and their companies. Launched in 2007 in Los Altos, CA, the firm invests the capital of its founding general partners, as well as close affiliates.

"As more and more information is collected on people's mobile phones, the need to easily reach and share it in a secure way from any computing device becomes very important," Mr. Barton said.

"Conveneer's unique technology, for which it has filed several patents globally, satisfies this demand and makes it a must-have connectivity service for any mobile phone manufacturer or wireless carrier," he said.

Mickey Alam Khan reported.