11th Jun 2007 09:10
Synchronica plc (LSE:SYNC), an international provider of mobilesynchronization and device management solutions, announced today thatits award-winning Mobile Gateway 3.0 now also supports Push Emailusing the Open Mobile Alliance Electronic Mail Notification (OMA EMN)standard. This will encourage more operators to make mobile Push Emailavailable to the consumer market by enabling more economical deliveryof industry-standard mobile Email to the estimated 1.3 billionIMAP-compatible phones already owned by consumers. £ The LEMONADE* standard was established by the Internet EngineeringTask Force (IETF) to improve the user experience and usability ofEmail on mobile devices. The LEMONADE group promotes open standardssuch as IMAP IDLE and OMA EMN, which are platform-independent andtherefore designed to support Email on the widest range of mobiledevices. £ For ISPs and ASPs, the LEMONADE IMAP IDLE standard is rapidlyemerging as the preferred mechanism for delivering Push Email tostandard mobile phones because it works independently of the operator. £ From an operator perspective, OMA EMN is more attractive than IMAPIDLE, because a mobile phone using OMA EMN does not require a constantconnection to the server and so demands less resource on the mobilenetwork infrastructure and has less impact on the battery life.Instead OMA EMN uses SMS messaging to alert the mobile device that newmail has arrived. £ From a user perspective, by adding support for the OMA EMNstandard, Synchronica has created a major opportunity for operators tooffer mobile Push Email to the mass market, because consumers can usethe service on standard mobile phones, right out of the box. £ According to mobile industry analyst firm Visiongain, the marketfor consumer mobile email is set to grow dramatically from 8.0 millionin 2007 to 36 million in 2008 and 184 million consumer mobile Emailaccounts anticipated by 2011. Synchronica's support for both OMA EMNand IMAP IDLE enables the vendor to address both sides of the mobileEmail delivery market. Synchronica believes this growth is likely tobe seen first in the emerging and rapidly-adopting markets of EasternEurope, Africa, Middle-East, Asia, and Latin America, where PCpenetration is low and traditional telecommunications infrastructureis limited, but mobile phones are seeing high growth rates.Synchronica predicts that in these markets, the mobile phone couldbecome the primary form of accessing Email, opening an attractive datarevenue potential for operators in these regions. £ "Our unique zero footprint architecture and commitment to openindustry standards is key to successfully targeting the consumermarket, particularly in emerging markets, with mobile Push Email,"said Carsten Brinkschulte, CEO of Synchronica. "Most mobile Emailsolutions today are based on proprietary protocols, requiring users todownload additional client software. This approach is set to fail inthe consumer market, where the overwhelming majority are using FeaturePhones that cannot use proprietary clients. Approaches using a Java MEclient theoretically work on Feature Phones, but provide an inferioruser experience compared to built-in clients and are therefore lesslikely to be adopted," he said. £ Mobile Gateway 3.0 provides carrier-grade scalability with loadbalancing and failover and runs on any J2EE application server usingSolaris, Linux, or Windows servers. It supports IMAP/SMTP for Emailand includes support for both IMAP IDLE and OMA EMN industry standardsfor Push Email. In addition, it includes support for SyncML (OMA DS)for synchronization of calendar, contacts, notes, and tasks. Forservice activation, it features a provisioning module (OMA CP),enabling over-the-air configuration of the built-in IMAP/SMTP andSyncML clients. £ The combination of IMAP/SMTP and SyncML standards allowsSynchronica to deliver Push Email and calendar/contact synchronizationto mass market Feature Phones, representing more than 80 per cent ofdevices in use today, as well as high-end Smartphones in use in thebusiness market. All these services can be delivered without requiringany additional client to be installed on the device. Synchronica'sMobile Gateway 3.0 also includes back-end support for popular Emailservices such as Gmail or AOL, as well as enterprise systems such asMicrosoft Exchange and Lotus Domino. £ \* The License to Enhanced Mobile Oriented and Diverse Endpoints(LEMONADE) working group was set up by the IETF to address theefficiency of Email services for bandwidth-limited andstorage-restricted devices, such as mobile phones and PDAs. £ LEMONADE's mobile Email standards are designed to extend existingIMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) and SMTP (Simple Mail TransferProtocol) standards. £ About Synchronica £ Synchronica plc develops and markets synchronization and devicemanagement solutions for mobile operators, device manufacturers, andenterprises. Its product portfolio ranges from data synchronization(DS) to device management (DM) and firmware update over the air(FOTA). Products include the mobile device management suite MobileManager and the Push Email and synchronization solution MobileGateway. Headquartered in the UK with a development center in Berlin,and offices in Hong Kong and Dubai Synchronica plc is a public companylisted on the London Stock Exchange (SYNC.LN). More information isavailable at www.synchronica.com Copyright Business Wire 2007Related Shares:
Syncona