The last few months, the market for providers of mobile push email is going through a shake-up. First, Microsoft announces support for mobile push email in the new version of Microsoft Exchange, for FREE!!! as part of SP2 for their 2003 version.
Second, RIM, the makers of the popular Blackberry are so far escaping an injunction as a result of the patent infringement law suit that they lost against NTP and NTP gets some of their patents invalidated. (NTP has rejected a $450MM settlement offer from RIM)
Then, on a surprising turn of events, Visto, a software provider of mobile push email being, receives an investment from NTP and licenses their patents, providing implicit validation to some of their claims and potentially making NTP's claims against RIM stronger. Moreover, Visto sues Microsoft for patent infringement of some of their patents on the mobile push email space. Are we going to see NTP suing Microsoft as well?
Finally, Nokia buys Intellisync, removing one of the advantages that Intellisync had against RIM, being hardware agnostic (one of the reasons why carries like Verizon or Vodafone started using software from companies like Intellisync or Visto).
The other contender on this space, Good, had already entered in a similar investment/licensing agreement with NTP some months ago.
As mobile push emails becomes more and more used by corporations the fight for owning this space will only get bigger. Obviously, Microsoft has the advantage of the large install base of Exchange and the fact that the software is free for Exchange users and they can take over this market if they open up their system to work with email clients that run on non Microsoft platforms.
CD
Comments