Wireless e-mail stalwart Research In Motion Ltd. should brace for intense competition as converged devices with BlackBerry-esque e-mail functionality and cell-phone features, including voice capabilities, enter the enterprise.
So goes the cry of RIM’s competitors, anyway.
RIM’s flagship BlackBerry e-mail device fuels the demand in the enterprise market right now, but once other companies provide equal or better solutions, “the market will break wide open,” said Brian Bogosian, chairman, president and chief executive officer of wireless e-mail provider Visto Corp. “We’ll be in position to really knock off RIM.”
Bogosian expects mobile e-mail access to become as second-nature to corporate users as voicemail. “Look at the dependence corporate users have on e-mail during the office day,” he said.
Visto’s device- and operating system-agnostic software solution offers users a “push” experience for e-mail, calendar and contacts on any wireless device. The company’s software can run on “any intelligent device,” including across Symbian OS (both UIQ and Series 60 Platform), Windows Mobile for Smartphone and Pocket PC Phone Edition, Palm OS, J2ME, IMAP, and SyncML-based handsets, as well as on most mobile browser-enabled devices. The software also supports Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino and POP e-mail platforms.
Visto, which garnered $65 million in funding earlier this year, counts 200,000 paid subscribers. Its software is offered by 10 carriers, including Nextel Communications Inc., AT&T Wireless Services Inc., Rogers Wireless Communications Inc., Bell Mobility, KPN, MTS Communications, SaskTel Mobility, SmarTone and Telus Mobility. The company plans to announce another major customer in October, said Bogosian.
Operators establish pricing models for Visto services, but they typically run $8 to $12 per user per month or $10 to $20 per user per month on an enterprise level, said Bogosian.
“Now is the time” for converged devices, said Bogosian, pointing to internal research that suggests 85 percent of BlackBerry users also carry cell phones.
Bogosian expects that over time large-scale enterprise buyers will rule the market for converged devices, purchasing software like Visto’s and making it available on an enterprise server. But during the next 12 to 24 months, he believes individual purchasers, anxious to test new converged technologies and devices, will be top buyers.
The most popular devices supporting Visto’s software are those that were designed to accommodate e-mail, like palmOne’s Treo 600 and the Sony Ericsson P900. Other devices from Nokia and Microsoft that feature keyboards enhance the Visto experience, he added.
In spite of the competition’s battle cry, it appears RIM is not yet down for the count.
With RIM’s new BlackBerry Built-In licensing program, other device manufacturers can incorporate BlackBerry software applications, including BlackBerry Email, BlackBerry Calendar and BlackBerry Browser, into their own mobile devices, allowing BlackBerry capabilities to coexist with cellular phone features.
Last week, Siemens’ mobile communication group introduced the SK65 mobile phone, the first phone outside RIM’s own product line to feature full BlackBerry functionality under the licensing program.
“The steadily growing demand for unified communication solutions will dramatically boost the need for phones that unite a broad range of office functionalities with convenient access to e-mail,” said Lothar Pauly, who will serve as chief executive officer of Siemens’ new Communication Group, which is expected to begin operating Oct. 1.
“We anticipate strong growth in this segment, which we expect to account for 20 percent of the wireless market by the year 2006. Our new SK65, which provides the user with a range of features thus far enjoyed only on a PC, will allow us to seize this market opportunity.”
The SK65 is set to be available in November in several versions geared toward users in corporate, small and medium enterprise, or small and home-office environments.
Other device makers are likely to follow suit, adding offerings to meet consumer demand for convergence. According to research firm Canalys, the market for smart phones is up more than 100 percent from last year.
Canalys’ research includes smart phones, like the Treo 600, wireless handhelds like the BlackBerry and handhelds without wide-area wireless like palmOne’s Tungsten T3.
Overall, the group said 2.9 million smart phones, 2.4 million handhelds and 600,000 wireless handhelds were shipped in the second quarter. The wireless handheld category was up 194 percent from the year-ago second quarter, largely due to RIM. North America was the only region where shipments of wireless handhelds exceeded shipments of smart phones, up 112 percent from 2003.
The top five mobile device vendors offering “smart” mobile devices were Nokia Corp., palmOne, Hewlett-Packard, Research In Motion and Sony Ericsson, Canalys said.
With 33.2-percent market share, Nokia dominated the market, but remained second to palmOne in North America, where the Treo 600 is the leading smart phone.
Worldwide, palmOne followed Nokia with 18-percent market share. Smart phones made up almost 15 percent of palmOne’s devices shipment in the second quarter, and according to Canalys, “it remains the clear leader worldwide in the data-centric segment.”
Also demonstrating the viability of wireless e-mail solutions, Cingular Wireless L.L.C. last week unveiled a pair of enterprise wireless e-mail solutions, which the carrier said are suitable for organizations of all sizes and are designed to work on a variety of mobile devices.
The solutions include the Xpress Mail Enterprise Edition, which is based on software from Visto rival Seven Networks Inc. and is designed to operate behind a corporate firewall, and the Xpress Mail Network Edition, a managed service hosted by Cingular.
The carrier noted that both solutions include a behind-the-firewall server; a zero-footprint managed solutions installation; push-based data access for Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, IMAP and POP e-mail accounts; over-the-air synchronization; multiple inboxes; global access; and enterprise-class security using 128-bit AES, SSL and VPN.
Both of Cingular’s new services are available with 5 megabytes of data transmission for $30 per user per month or $40 per user per month for unlimited data use. Xpress Mail Enterprise Edition requires a one-time $1,500 installation fee, and Xpress Mail Enterprise Edition requires a one-time $1,000 connection fee.
