Cingular to begin offering GoodLink e-mail service

Good Technology, a competitor to mobile e-mail vendor Research In Motion (RIM), unveiled its first major deal with a carrier on Tuesday when it announced that Cingular Wireless will sell its service on two devices.

Cingular, the largest U.S. mobile operator, will offer the GoodLink service for the PalmOne Treo 650 and the Siemens SX66 Pocket PC, a Windows Mobile Pocket PC device from Siemens. GoodLink continuously synchronizes a user’s Microsoft Outlook e-mail and other data, allowing enterprise employees to access their e-mail, calendars, contacts, notes and lists of tasks from anywhere in Cingular’s coverage area, said Good Chief Executive Officer Danny Shader.

Competitors have begun encroaching on RIM’s successful service, which primarily runs on the Waterloo, Ontario, company’s own BlackBerry devices. Nextel Communications last week introduced a Java-based mobile e-mail and PIM (personal information manager) service that uses Visto’s ConstantSync technology. Good and Visto have the advantage of being less tied to a particular set of devices, said Bob Egan, an analyst at Mobile Competency, in Providence, Rhode Island.

GoodLink offers enterprises a choice of devices and operating systems, over-the-air provisioning that lowers the cost of ownership, and a better user interface and easier device upgrades than RIM’s product, Shader said. The Palm and Siemens devices are intended to be just the first of many from Cingular that will offer GoodLink, he said. Shader sees Santa Clara, California-based Good as a “catalyst” that is helping vendors such as Palm, Siemens, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard draw the attention of wireless carriers with their mobile devices.

“Cingular and the device makers will be the biggest revenue makers in this business,” Shader said.

Users are looking for mobile e-mail push services and looking beyond RIM’s proprietary system, but its current rivals — namely Good, Visto, and Seven Networks — won’t come out the winners in the end except through acquisition by a larger player, according to Mobile Competency’s Egan. Microsoft and IBM are working on setting up their own systems as extensions to Outlook and to Lotus Notes, he said.

“In the long run, the native installs win,” Egan said.

One possible misstep in Good’s deal with Cingular is pricing, he added. One-time startup charges, in particular, will alienate small and medium-size businesses, in Egan’s view.

Whereas Nextel is promoting its Mobile Email Enhanced service as expanding BlackBerry-like capabilities to less expensive devices (the carrier offers the BlackBerry 7520 for $149 with a service contract), Cingular is aiming upscale with GoodLink. Cingular’s price for a Treo 650 is $399 with a two-year contract, and for the Siemens device is $499, according to Cingular spokesman John Kampfe. Both devices have an integrated QWERTY keypad.

Enterprises can buy the GoodLink service with unlimited data for a monthly fee of $44.99 per month on top of a voice calling plan. They must also buy a $1,500 one-year Starter Pak and a one-time $99 license for each user. The Starter Pak includes a year of IT support by Good and support from Cingular for the life of the contract.