Mobile developer Cicero Networks has raised €1.4 million in new funding and has launched its latest product, a voice and video application for Nokia handsets.

The Dublin firm secured the investment from a number of private investors, including Propylon founders Declan Hogan and Paul McKeon, and Altobridge directors Mike Fitzgerald and Bart Kane.

Other investors involved in the funding round included founder of Similarity Systems Brian Caulfield, Paul Devine, Liam McErlane and the Mianach BES Fund.

The new product, dubbed CiceroPhone V2oIP, enables IP-based video calling over Nokia E Series and N Series mobile phones.

While video calling is currently available as a 3G service from most European mobile phone networks, Cicero chief executive Ross Brennan explained that its IP-based solution offered a number of benefits over circuit switched video calling.

It could be used within a suite of IP applications on the phone and can also place video calls to non-Cicero enabled devices.

This includes calls to webcam-enabled desktop or laptop computers that use the same standardised IP telephony SIP protocols.

Brennan said that the new product was currently being used by a number of partners with whom it had worked on developing the new system and the company would now be embarking on a sales effort to bring it to its prime target customers, namely mobile networks across Europe.

Founded in 2002, Cicero has to date developed IP-based voice and messaging systems. The new product will add video into an integrated offering.

‘‘We are now doing pretty well in what is a tight business market and we are making good strides in working with our partners,” said Brennan.

‘‘Although every sector is suffering at the moment because of the recession, telecoms is at least one step removed from the crisis.”

Brennan said that the company was largely self-funded from its own revenues and whether it would seek further funding would depend upon the potential for growth.

Cicero’s most recently filed abridged accounts indicate that it made a loss of €468,000 in the year ending December 31, 2006. It had accumulated losses of €1.3 million and shareholders’ funds of €1.4 million.