Synchronica, the international vendor of mobile synchronization and device management software, has announced that it has acquired essentially all assets of the US 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 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."