Mobile e-mail market heats up

The battle lines in the mobile e-mail market are being drawn, Nokia executives said Tuesday at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona.

Just two years ago there were perhaps 30 providers of mobile e-mail platforms, said Clyde Foster, chief operating officer for Intellisync, the mobile e-mail platform company recently acquired by Nokia. Today there are just a handful and they’re jockeying to corner a piece of the market.

As Nokia sees it, Microsoft and Research In Motion (RIM) will continue to compete for the high-end user as their offerings are typically available on more expensive smart phones. “We don’t think we’ll compete with RIM and Microsoft,” Foster said.

Instead, Nokia is trying to grow the mobile market to reach users of all phones. In fact, Nokia hopes to support e-mail on every class of Nokia device in a year, said Dave Grannan, general manager of e-mail enterprise solutions for Nokia.

Even though there has been consolidation in the e-mail provider market, enterprises are still faced with tough decisions if they decide to support mobile e-mail. Some enterprises are considering relying on hosted mobile e-mail services from operators, rather than investing in and managing the service themselves.

“A couple years ago, I would have said that companies are reluctant to rely on operators,” Foster said. But there are a couple of factors driving them to consider hosted solutions today, he said. One is that some operators are essentially throwing in the e-mail service for free for enterprises that sign up for a certain number of mobile data subscriptions, he said. Also, enterprises are struggling to make due with flat IT budgets and the hosted option could be more cost effective than finding a qualified IT manager with relevant skills, he said.