mpowerplayer is a technology-startup company based in Reston, Virginia

Reston, Virginia

Reston is a census-designated place in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States, within the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The population was 58,404, at the 2010 Census and 56,407 at the 2000 census...

, just outside Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

. The company offers a solution for the video game industry (game publishers and mobile operators) to enable their customers to browse and demo mobile games on their web browser before buying them. Customers include Sprint-Nextel, EA Mobile and Sega Mobile.

Technically mpowerplayer's platform is a Java ME

Java Platform, Micro Edition

Java Platform, Micro Edition, or Java ME, is a Java platform designed for embedded systems . Target devices range from industrial controls to mobile phones and set-top boxes...

 emulator for devices capable of running Java SE

Java Platform, Standard Edition

Java Platform, Standard Edition or Java SE is a widely used platform for programming in the Java language. It is the Java Platform used to deploy portable applications for general use...

. In May 2008, the company was awarded with the Duke's Choice Award in the mobile gaming category from Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...

.

Funding

Following its launch from tech incubator LaunchBox Digital, on 11 September 2008 it was announced that mpowerplayer had raised $2.5 million in its first round of funding. Funding comes from New Atlantic Ventures, the Center for Innovative Technology GAP Fund and LaunchBox Digital. The company plans to use the funding to expand their presence and their widget-based mobile game catalog on more social networking sites.