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With the explosion in wireless subscriber base and the increasing use of mobile email by subscribers, application vendors are vying for a share of the platform and OS market. Unlike the PC business where there are very few players with virtual monopoly of Microsoft, the mobile platform space is wide open and the battle has just started. This assumes importance in the light of the fact that, increasingly, a large number of professionals owning a mobile device travel extensively, nationally and internationally, and the need to remain in touch for business has become important. According to statistics, by the year ended 2004, mobile professionals comprised about 17 percent of worldwide corporate professionals, which is expected to grow to 89 percent by 2008. During the same period, the statistics further details that each employee using wireless e-mail will have put in an additional 60 minutes of work per day which is expected to grow to 95 minutes by year 2008.

Yankee research's conclusion is not surprising that enterprise technology decision makers consider e-mail as a top driver for wide area wireless solutions. The e-mail penetration in mobile devices remains miniscule in India. Even in the US it is at the 5 to 6 percent level.

RIM leads the pack
These developments have direct bearing for mobile platform and OS vendors who are eying huge growth of handheld devices due to explosion in subscriber base. According to statistics, about 98 percent handsets use a proprietary operating system developed by handset vendors themselves. The rest use other OS such as ones developed by Microsoft, Symbian, and Linux developers. According to ABI Research, as people demand better features such as larger screens and better menu navigation, the standardized OS in all likelihood will replace proprietary programs. The research also predicts that a quarter of the handsets shipped will either be standard-OS smart phones or connected PDAs by 2009.

There are two sets of platform vendors in the mobile e-mail space. There are those who offer server based solutions which sit at the enterprise end, and then there are solutions based on network which are taken care of by the service providers. Research In Motion (RIM), a Canada based company, which makes Blackberry, is the present leader pushing the email market with about 3 million subscribers and 80 service provider. RIM provides all the components from the handset to the server, platform, and OS. While RIM has decided to focus on tying up with service providers, other players in the platform arena include IBM and Good technology who have adopted a strategy of integrating wireless applications for enterprise.

Intellisync, which offers platform-independent solutions that support several devices and operating systems, has acquired over 500,000 customers. Good Technology, another emerging player, has struck a deal with Cingular Wireless to sell devices based on Good Technology's software, and will directly compete with BlackBerry, which is also offered by Cingular. The competition has intensified with Sprint Corp also introducing devices based on Good Technology and Seven Networks. Visto also had some wins recently. These players are targeting service providers directly, to offer solutions to the enterprises and individual users. They, however, have not been able to make much impact due to relatively slow adoption of wireless by enterprises. But with wireless operators going aggressive with their offering to integrate enterprise applications with their network, the situation may well change.

The other fight
Apart from the platform vendors, the OS market is also hotting up with Symbian (a consortium of wireless firms formed by Nokia Corp) and Windows Mobile gearing up for the next battler. Gartner has predicted big trouble for Symbian in the light of Microsoft releasing its Magneto release of Windows for Smartphones some time in Q3-Q4 2005. The other OSs fighting for the pie include Palm OS, and SyncML

It may be recalled that Motorola, which was also part of Symbian, chose to go with Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS. Chinese company E28 has also entered into the fray offering handset vendors the software based on Open source.

The Indian scenario
Several operators, both GSM and CDMA, have introduced high-end handsets which have competing platforms and OSs. In India, Bharti has exclusive tie up to bundle Blackberry. Other high-end devices are on offer from operators such as Idea who have competing products on different platforms. Idea recently launched mail for business users. Idea's USP was that its customer can access email with a range of GPRS enabled handsets of their choice, unlike Bharti which just has BlackBerry as the only device for business users. Idea has both push and pull based service. The push based service is targeted at business users using any of the Symbian and Windows enabled mobile devices with GPRS connectivity. The service comes with real-time synchronization of mail on mobile devices with the corporate mail server, same as what is available on Bharti's Blackberry. The service costing Rs 750 per month, supports attachment types like Word, PDF, Excel, PowerPoint, and JPEG. Idea also offers a pull based E-mail service targeted at corporate users with any GPRS enabled mobile device.

Hutch has also introduced HutchMail, which supports Outlook 2003, Windows Mobile and Lotus notes. So a user has phones including the Nokia 60 and 80 series, Sony Ericsson, Windows Pocket PC and Windows smartphones. Like Idea, it also supports all kinds of attachments and mail synchronization features. Hutch's service also has AES 128-bit encryption ensuring encryption of the entire message, not just body text. Reliance Infocomm, through its Mobile Office also offers access of e-mail messages on any Java enabled CDMA handsets.

The future outlook
The battle for the e-mail space is going to hot up with both platform and OS vendors vying for their share of the pie. According to Ovum, RIM will have to diversify to sustain the increasing competition. RIM also has to take a second look at its proprietary solution with most of the other vendors going in for open solutions. There are also reports of service providers not being comfortable with the idea of hosted server as opposed to Microsoft's push focus. Another factor which is going against RIM is the serve and support fees that service providers pay to RIM and observers feel that the third party platforms has the potential to rake in more moolah for the service providers besides offering wider choice to the customers.

Despite the fight over platform and OS, vendors have come together through the Mobile Enterprise Alliance (MEA) aimed at promoting the business benefits of workforce mobility to enterprise IT managers and decision makers. Linux Mobile Alliance has also been formed where members intend to push Linux as a smart operating system for handheld devices. Open Mobile Terminal Platform (OMTP) is another industry organisation supporting open standards for mobile devices. Members include PalmSource, Symbian, Qualcomm, Texas instuments and some handset manufacturers such as Siemens and Ericsson, Samsung, Kyocera.

With reports of Google buying Android, a startup working on software for handsets, there is a speculation that it may well be the latest entrant to the Mobile OS arena.

Sudesh Prasad