TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Microsoft Venture Adds to Blackberry Woes

Re: Microsoft Venture Adds to Blackberry Woes

Dan (dan@nospam.com)
Mon, 13 Feb 2006 10:45:43 -0600

Is anyone supporting a agnostic version of email push to mobile phones
or is it all tied to proprietary infrastructure?

Dan

On 2/12/2006 9:08 PM, Laurence Frost wrote:
> 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.

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