Messaging - Beyond the Blackberry

By GSM>3G Vision (telecoms.com), 21st June 2007
(http://www.telecoms.com/itmgcontent/tcoms/events/gsmwfo/61/20017434791.html)

Looking at the apparent ubiquity of the Blackberrys among the business community, the layman's impression may well be that mobile email is ubiquitous in the enterprise. Jason Guesman, SVP and general manager of Americas for Seven, feels by contrast that there is "quite a bit of opportunity for significant growth in enterprise".

That's not too surprising when you consider that Seven produces mobile email software that is sold as a service by mobile operators and service providers. But he is right to say: "We think that the solutions that are out there today are really only targeting a small fraction of potential users," he says. To put it another way, RIM represents less than half a per cent of the mobile devices worldwide and Seven is not alone in wanting to go after as much of the other 99.5 per cent - consumer and enterprise - as might be interested. "We believe there's a huge opportunity and a lot of it is tied to device support," Guesman explains.

However, even in the enterprise, change is not always popular. "What you find with lots of technology in the enterprise is that a good day for the CIO is when nothing changes!" says Guesman. But end user reality is clearly against the status quo. "Look at every office in the world," he says. "There's a phone and there's a computer: these are the two key productivity tools. When you leave the office you take the phone with you and the PC stays behind. You look at that for your email, your calendar, your contacts. Taking that with you keeps you connected; the pace of business can move a lot faster when everyone is plugged in."

However, enterprise awareness of mobile email is at least strong. What about the consumer? The opportunity is clearly there given that fixed email accounts are pervasive - both as an organisational and a social tool. So how can you translate that to the mobile environment? "The key thing is first to figure out what are the most popular mail services and make sure your platform can easily support those out of the box - and that there are no barriers to setup," says Guesman. "You can't ask users to put in their SMTP address, their port settings, do this, do that... you just lose 98 per cent of the customers like that. It has to be very simple."

Obviously Seven believes it is already meeting the consumer market's requirements - at least in the US where the company's support is spread over 20 handsets, by no means all high end. "For us it's clear that email for consumer phones is a very compelling proposition," says Guesman. "It's now about running fast enough to get on as many phones as possible."

And then there's the rest of the world - notably certain parts of Asia. "The interesting thing about Asia is how much opportunity there is for mobile to really be the first computing experience," says Guesman. "In China the opportunity goes beyond just extending your mobile email experience to this being your primary mobile email experience - on your phone."

Of course consumer email is hardly a mass market yet. How long does Guesman think it will be before consumer mobile email is taken for granted in the same way as fixed email? "I'd say a year and a half," he suggests. And he sees it eventually becoming as everyday as voicemail. "You buy your phone, you set up your voicemail account, you set up your email account. It's really that easy."But is pricing easy too - or a deterrent? Enterprises may be able to tolerate a reasonable cost for mobile email, but what about consumers?

"We're seeing a number of different billing models ranging from charging for the actual application to bundling in with data services," says Guesman. "More and more we're seeing the bundling approach working where operators try to build a core value proposition". And if a user feels it's worth paying a modest amount for a core set of services that includes email, revenue from other services could follow. Ah yes, the ever-popular question: could consumer mobile email drive the use of associated content?

"We see a great intersection between content and communication," says Guesman. And he can back that statement up with at least one statistic from a couple of the company's operator clients: the news that 30 per cent of the users that signed up for email actually activated their data package at that time.

"Once you've got a really good messaging experience on the phone you start to layer content," says Guesman. And if phones with gigabytes of memory become a common feature, "you're going to want to share that content, you get more consumption of content and you get a virtuous cycle of people downloading viewing content." With messaging tightly integrated to allow easy sharing of content, he adds, "this could trigger a whole other cycle of consumption and purchases".