nancy_gohring
Writer

Google offers push e-mail for iPhone, Windows Mobile users

news
Sep 22, 20092 mins

Users of Google Apps or personal Gmail can take advantage of the free service offered through Google Sync

Google introduced on Tuesday push e-mail for iPhone and Windows Mobile devices, stepping up its enterprise offerings.

The push e-mail service is available through Google Sync, the technology that already pushes contacts and calendars to phones. Google Sync is free for Google Apps customers.

Administrators can enable push e-mail through the Google Apps control panel, although if companies are already using Google Sync for contacts and calendar, the e-mail feature is automatically enabled, Raju Gulabani, product management director at Google, wrote in a blog post.

People using Gmail and Google Calendar with personal accounts can also use Google Sync to push e-mail and calendar updates to their phones.

Users can choose to sync contacts, their calendar and e-mail or any combination of the services.

Google already offers a connector service that integrates with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server to push Google Apps e-mail, calendar and contacts to BlackBerry devices.

Push e-mail for iPhone and Windows Mobile phones is the latest attempt by Google to move into the business market. It is competing with many well-established providers of push e-mail, including Microsoft and Research In Motion. It is also competing with a number of third-party companies like Good Technology that offer companies a single platform that can push e-mail and other corporate data out to a variety of cell phones.

nancy_gohring

Nancy Gohring is a freelance journalist who started writing about mobile phones just in time to cover the transition to digital. She's written about PCs from Hanover, cellular networks from Singapore, wireless standards from Cyprus, cloud computing from Seattle and just about any technology subject you can think of from Las Vegas. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Computerworld, Wired, the Seattle Times and other well-respected publications.

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