Is anyone supporting a agnostic version of email push to mobile phones or is it all tied to proprietary infrastructure?
Dan
By LAURENCE FROST, AP Business Writer
Microsoft Corp. has won backing from major cellular networks for a new
> generation of phones designed to transform mobile e-mail from
> executive accessory to standard issue for the corporate rank-and-file.
> The partnerships, with operators including Vodafone and Cingular, to
> be announced Monday at a mobile industry gathering in Spain, could
> spell more trouble for the embattled Blackberry and other niche e-mail
> technologies, analysts say.
> Unlike the Blackberry and its peers, phones running Microsoft's latest
> Windows Mobile operating system can receive e-mails "pushed" directly
> from servers that handle a company's messaging - without the need for
> a separate mobile server or additional license payments.
> As costs fall, Microsoft is betting companies will extend mobile
> e-mail beyond top management to millions more of their employees.
> "We're at the tipping point of seeing exponential growth in this
> area," said Pieter Knook, the U.S. software giant's senior vice
> president for mobile and embedded devices.
> On the opening day of the 3GSM phone show, Hewlett-Packard Co. and
> three other handset makers are expected to launch the first Windows
> smartphones equipped with the new e-mail technology out of the
> box. HP's new iPAQ HW6900 Mobile Messenger also offers Bluetooth and
> Wi-Fi connectivity.
> Vodafone Group PLC is to sell the phones under its own brand, in a
> joint marketing deal, targeting companies that already run Microsoft's
> Exchange software on their servers. Exchange is the collaborative glue
> behind Microsoft's popular Outlook application, which manages
> appointments and electronic address books in addition to e-mail.
> Together with Cingular Wireless, Orange and T-Mobile, Vodafone will
> also deliver phone software upgrades to subscribers who are already
> running the Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system on their smart phones.
> Microsoft laid the groundwork for its e-mail offensive with an October
> update to Exchange -- which led the server software market last year
> with 48 percent of global sales, according to technology research firm > Gartner.
> Some observers have been predicting that the new technology will hurt
> Blackberry's maker, Canada-based Research In Motion Ltd (RIM).
> Strand Consult, a Denmark-based IT research house, expects companies
> worldwide to invest in much broader mobile e-mail access for their > employees in 2006.
> "At the end of the year, many will be asking themselves whether they
> really needed a Blackberry handset from RIM to check mail -- and RIM
> might be asking themselves what went wrong," Strand wrote in a
> research note.
> "Microsoft will most probably overtake RIM as the leading mobile > e-mail provider."
> Mobile messaging prices are already falling.
> In the United States, Cingular last year began bundling an e-mail
> service from Blackberry rival Good Technologies Inc. with its
> unlimited wireless Internet package, at no extra charge.
> Wireless access to e-mail, calendars and contacts -- once the preserve
> of jet-setting executives and professionals in law and finance -- is
> increasingly seen as a useful tool for a wider array of workers,
> keeping them connected wherever they may be.