Synchronica plc, a leading international vendor of mobile
synchronization and device management software, today announced that it
has acquired essentially all assets of the U.S. mobile email specialist
GoodServer. GoodServer's technology is a key component of Synchronica's
Mobile Gateway and underpins the mobile email products of a number of
players in the telecoms market. The acquisition will give Synchronica
sole rights to GoodServer's intellectual property (IP) and existing
license contracts.
With a global addressable market of more
than three billion mobile phone users and an additional one billion
subscribers expected in the next 18 months, the market for push email
is set to increase drastically as mobile email and personal information
management (PIM) services cross over into the mainstream. Industry
analyst Forrester estimates that mobile consumer email will grow to
62.7 million users by 2008, easily outnumbering business users
receiving and sending emails with their mobile devices.
Strategy
Analytics cites the open standards Push IMAP / LEMONADE and OMA DS
(formerly SyncML) as being crucial for the growth of mobile email in
the mass market, where consumers cannot afford to use expensive
smartphones. GoodServer provides email server technology with proven
implementations of the most important industry standards and is best
known for its IMAP4 Server Software Development Kit (SDK), POP3 Server
SDK, and SMTP Server SDK.
The IMAP and SMTP technology of
GoodServer is embedded in Synchronica's Mobile Gateway, making push
email accessible on the majority of mass market phones. Other licensees
of GoodServer's IP include Nokia Intellisync, BellSouth, Cisco, NUASIS,
Teamware, and Axis Mobile. Under the terms of the agreement,
Synchronica will be granted sole rights to the intellectual property
and will benefit from future revenues of all existing license contracts.
"Open
industry standards have cleared the way for accessing PIM and email on
mass market phones, and the mobile email market is set to explode over
the next three years. We expect a dramatic increase of mobile email, in
particular in emerging markets, where the mobile operators have the
opportunity to make the mobile phone the primary form of accessing the
internet and email services", said Carsten Brinkschulte, CEO of
Synchronica. "By acquiring the rights to GoodServer's technology and
extending our own IP licenses to other players in the industry, we are
strengthening our position in the market for consumer and corporate
mobile email."
Synchronica's Mobile Gateway provides a
unique combination of industry standards-based solutions for delivering
mobile email and synchronization to the vast majority of mobile phones
- without requiring additional clients to be installed on the handsets.
It supports calendar and contact synchronization for the estimated 1.5
billion OMA DS-compatible mobile phones (source: Visiongain) in use
today. For push email, Mobile Gateway uses LEMONADE (OMA EMN and IMAP
IDLE), enabling operators and service providers to deliver push email
to both smartphones and mass market feature phones.
Commenting
on the acquisition, Andrew Brown, Director for Strategy Analytics'
Wireless Practice said: "We have always believed that OMA DS and IMAP
formed a critical basis for open standards-based vendors to take their
slice of the mobile email market. This acquisition will open up mobile
email and PIM synchronization to the majority of consumer and corporate
mobile phones, with the potential for significant incremental mobile
data revenues to operators, ISPs, and service providers."
About Synchronica Mobile Gateway
Synchronica's
Mobile Gateway provides push email and synchronization services for
both consumers and business users. For consumers, it includes support
for Gmail, AOL, and any IMAP or POP3 mailbox, adding a push email
experience with automated over-the-air device configuration for easy
setup. For business users, Mobile Gateway provides built-in support for
Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, and Sun Java Communications Suite,
thus synchronizing with the majority of business email systems, without
requiring any software to be installed on the phone or connectors to be
installed behind the corporate firewall. This unique zero footprint
architecture makes Mobile Gateway extremely attractive to operators and
service providers.
About GoodServer
GoodServer,
founded by David Rauschenbach in 1996, is a provider of email
enablement and integration technologies. Key products include IMAP4
Server SDK, POP3 Server SDK, and SMTP Server SDK, which together
provide complete implementations of the dominant industry standard
protocols used to send and receive email, and AGMS, which is
GoodServer's second-generation email middleware server and integration
platform.
About Synchronica
Synchronica plc develops and markets synchronization and device
management solutions for mobile operators, device manufacturers, and
enterprises. Its product portfolio ranges from data synchronization
(DS) to device management (DM) and firmware updates over the air
(FOTA). Products include the mobile device management product set
Mobile Manager Suite and the push email and synchronization solution
Mobile Gateway. Headquartered in the U.K., with a development center in
Germany and offices in the USA, Hong Kong, and Dubai, Synchronica plc
is a public company traded on the AIM list of the London Stock Exchange
(SYNC.LN). More information is available at www.synchronica.com [1]
Links:
[1] http://www.synchronica.com/