Medio Systems, which makes software allowing mobile phone users to quickly find relevant search results on the Internet, said Thursday it plans to announce the rollout of its service to a North American mobile carrier next week.

The announcement comes on the heels of the company receiving its first round of funding for $11 million in October. The round was co-led by Mohr-Davidow Ventures and Frazier Technology Ventures.

Medio CEO Brian Lent said the rollout would be done quietly for a user base of between 4 million to 5 million users. The move will be the Seattle-based mobile search startup’s second major rollout, following its debut to European mobile users through a relationship with cell phone maker Nokia.

Mr. Lent declined to name the mobile carrier.

He said the rollouts were to demonstrate that Medio is a different kind of search company in a market space that’s becoming rapidly crowded by major players like Google, Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft.

“If you look at the traditional web players, they own the consumer and the advertising experience,” said Mr. Lent. “Their interest is to own the telephone network or the VoIP network. They want to own the end-to-end experience. We’re doing this by working with carriers, and once you get in with a carrier, that provides a significant barrier to access.”

Medio’s business model also has a difference in that it aims to help carriers sell more digital content like ringtones, games, and video. The user can also find information like news, stock quotes, local weather, and directory searches.

Founded in 2004, the company was initially seeded with about $900,000 by Mohr-Davidow and Dot Edu Ventures. Prior to co-founding the company, Mr. Lent had been an entrepreneur in residence at Mohr-Davidow.

Challenges from Giants

MDV general partner Sam Jadallah was bullish on Medio’s prospects. According to Mr. Jadallah, while the search giants have been successful in making a good search experience for web users on desktops, moving that experience to a mobile phone is far from a slam-dunk.

“With the mobile phone, it’s a very different platform and a very different experience,” said Mr. Jadallah, citing the smaller screen size, slower response time, and smaller memory footprint associated with mobile phones.

“When you’re on the web and you’re doing research, you’re impressed when your search results come back and there are 26 million hits for a query,” he said. “On a phone, you’re unimpressed. You want one or two answers.”

He also acknowledged that players like Google and Microsoft aren’t to be taken lightly.

“I think the massive players—the giants—have lower barriers to entry than anyone,” said Mr. Jadallah. “They can get into the market at any point. What gives us confidence is that their approach will be very different than what Medio will do.”