"It's a pity that Apple has decided to go down a proprietary route and licence Activesync but then Apple is really only a mini Microsoft after all." That's the verdict of
Synchronica's CEO, Carsten Brinkschulte. He was commenting on Apple's recent
announcement that support for push email will be built into the next release of its iPhone OS. Which is a clear pitch for business customers, of course. Once again the move is flawed. Apple has done the deal so the iPhone will
work with Microsoft's Exchange. However, that leaves roughly 50 per cent of the
market, including those using Lotus Domino (very popular with corporates in
Europe) or even Sun's communications suite, out in the cold. Brinkschulte argues that far more important than the tie-up with Microsoft is
Apple's announcement that it has opened up the iPhone platform to outside
developers. That will enable Synchronica to develop a SyncML compatible client for the
iPhone which will make it easy for iPhone users to sync their addressbooks and
calendars as well as their emails. Such syncing doesn't just apply to the corporate space, it will work with
Google's offerings, too. Demand for synchronising iPhones with Microsoft Exchange is very definitely
there, Brinkschulte revealed. His company set up a free gateway for iPhone users
and over 20,000 people signed up for it. "What this shows is that there's a pent up demand for syncing consumer
devices with corporate mail systems, " Brinkschulte added. "That's the space
we're playing in because our products can enable 1.5 billion feature phones
users out there to access their emails." So Apple has decided it wants to go after the push email sector pioneered by
RIM with the Blackberry. What does RIM do? It goes into the online music
business in retaliation. While Apple was announcing the Microsoft deal, RIM created a partnership with
a social networking site called Dip-dive. This site was founded, however, by a
musician calling himself will.i.am and the site thus acts as a online music
store, too. Perhaps RIM should licence the technology from Sony and go the whole hog with
a Blackberry Walkman?
