11th Jun 2007 07:02
Synchronica PLC11 June 2007 Synchronica Adds More Fizz to LEMONADE Addition of OMA EMN support on Mobile Gateway opens up major opportunity for operators to deliver Push Email to the consumer market Global Messaging 2007, Monte Carlo, 11 June, 2007. - Synchronica plc, aninternational provider of mobile synchronization and device managementsolutions, announced today that its award-winning Mobile Gateway 3.0 now alsosupports Push Email using 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 delivery ofindustry-standard mobile Email to the estimated 1.3 billion IMAP-compatiblephones already owned by consumers. The LEMONADE* standard was established by the Internet Engineering Task Force(IETF) to improve the user experience and usability of Email on mobile devices.The LEMONADE group promotes open standards such as IMAP IDLE and OMA EMN, whichare platform-independent and therefore designed to support Email on the widestrange of mobile devices. For ISPs and ASPs, the LEMONADE IMAP IDLE standard is rapidly emerging as thepreferred mechanism for delivering Push Email to standard mobile phones becauseit works independently of the operator. From an operator perspective, OMA EMN is more attractive than IMAP IDLE, becausea mobile phone using OMA EMN does not require a constant connection to theserver and so demands less resource on the mobile network infrastructure and hasless impact on the battery life. Instead OMA EMN uses SMS messaging to alert themobile device that new mail has arrived. From a user perspective, by adding support for the OMA EMN standard, Synchronicahas created a major opportunity for operators to offer mobile Push Email to themass market, because consumers can use the service on standard mobile phones,right out of the box. According to mobile industry analyst firm Visiongain, the market for consumermobile email is set to grow dramatically from 8.0 million in 2007 to 36 millionin 2008 and 184 million consumer mobile Email accounts anticipated by 2011.Synchronica's support for both OMA EMN and IMAP IDLE enables the vendor toaddress both sides of the mobile Email delivery market. Synchronica believesthis growth is likely to be seen first in the emerging and rapidly-adoptingmarkets of Eastern Europe, Africa, Middle-East, Asia, and Latin America, wherePC penetration is low and traditional telecommunications infrastructure islimited, but mobile phones are seeing high growth rates. Synchronica predictsthat in these markets, the mobile phone could become the primary form ofaccessing Email, opening an attractive data revenue potential for operators inthese regions. "Our unique zero footprint architecture and commitment to open industrystandards is key to successfully targeting the consumer market, particularly inemerging markets, with mobile Push Email," said Carsten Brinkschulte, CEO ofSynchronica. "Most mobile Email solutions today are based on proprietaryprotocols, requiring users to download additional client software. This approachis set to fail in the consumer market, where the overwhelming majority are usingFeature Phones that cannot use proprietary clients. Approaches using a Java MEclient theoretically work on Feature Phones, but provide an inferior userexperience compared to built-in clients and are therefore less likely to beadopted," he said. Mobile Gateway 3.0 provides carrier-grade scalability with load balancing andfailover and runs on any J2EE application server using Solaris, Linux, orWindows servers. It supports IMAP/SMTP for Email and includes support for bothIMAP IDLE and OMA EMN industry standards for Push Email. In addition, itincludes support for SyncML (OMA DS) for synchronization of calendar, contacts,notes, and tasks. For service activation, it features a provisioning module (OMACP), enabling over-the-air configuration of the built-in IMAP/SMTP and SyncMLclients. The combination of IMAP/SMTP and SyncML standards allows Synchronica to deliverPush Email and calendar/contact synchronization to mass market Feature Phones,representing more than 80 per cent of devices in use today, as well as high-endSmartphones in use in the business market. All these services can be deliveredwithout requiring any additional client to be installed on the device.Synchronica's Mobile Gateway 3.0 also includes back-end support for popularEmail services such as Gmail or AOL, as well as enterprise systems such asMicrosoft Exchange and Lotus Domino. -ends- \* The License to Enhanced Mobile Oriented and Diverse Endpoints (LEMONADE)working group was set up by the IETF to address the efficiency of Email servicesfor bandwidth-limited and storage-restricted devices, such as mobile phones andPDAs. LEMONADE's mobile Email standards are designed to extend existing IMAP (InternetMessage Access Protocol) and SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) standards. About Synchronica Synchronica plc develops and markets synchronization and device managementsolutions for mobile operators, device manufacturers, and enterprises. Itsproduct portfolio ranges from data synchronization (DS) to device management(DM) and firmware update over the air (FOTA). Products include the mobile devicemanagement suite Mobile Manager and the Push Email and synchronization solutionMobile Gateway. Headquartered in the UK with a development center in Berlin, andoffices in Hong Kong and Dubai Synchronica plc is a public company listed on theLondon Stock Exchange (SYNC.LN). More information is available atwww.synchronica.com For more information, please contact: Nicole Meissner, CMOSynchronica plcTel.: +44 1892 552 780Mobile: +44 7977 256 412 Fax: +44 1892 552 721 [email protected] Corfin CommunicationsBen Hunt, Harry Chathli Tell: +44 (0) 20 7929 8989 This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock ExchangeRelated Shares:
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