Vendors involved include RIM - BlackBerry Connect, DataViz on ActiveSync, iAnywhere, Intellisync, Nokia Enterprise Solutions, QuickOffice, Seven and Visto. Symbian is following a service-agnostic approach with push email, which is something of a contrast to its main mobile enterprise email device competitors RIM and Microsoft.
Press Release:
Symbian sets standard with mobile email validation program
London, UK, 7 February 2006 – Symbian Limited today announces the launch of its industry endorsed mobile email validation program. The Symbian Email Validation Program promotes best practice for push email solutions on Symbian OS™, supporting vendors who target the mass market through Symbian OS mobile phones.
The validation program defines industry agreed quality guidelines for push email solutions in the form of a Symbian Recommended Practice against which vendors can validate their solutions. The guidelines cover the whole user experience from installation and device compatibility to minimum service functionality and ease-of-use and have been developed in close collaboration with a broad spectrum of the leading vendors in the market including RIM - BlackBerry Connect®, DataViz on ActiveSync, iAnywhere, Intellisync, Nokia Enterprise Solutions, QuickOffice, Seven and Visto.
Solutions that successfully complete the validation process are accredited with the “Symbian Approved” mark, signifying to phone manufacturers, system integrators and network operators that the solutions offer an industry agreed level of functionality. This benchmark is designed to shorten the time required to roll-out push email services and accelerate the anticipated widespread adoption of push email on Symbian OS phones to enterprises and mobile workers.
Symbian
“The rapid growth of Symbian OS phones combined with the emergence of mobile push email represents a market opportunity for everyone,” said Simon Garth, VP, Marketing, Symbian. “Symbian is working closely with the mobile industry to deliver powerful mobile email solutions to a hitherto largely untapped market. By setting a standard for mobile push email, network operators, phone makers and mobile email solutions providers can roll out mobile email more quickly. Symbian anticipates the population of email enabled phones will rapidly surpass that of email specific handhelds."
According to Datamonitor there are roughly 650 million corporate email inboxes worldwide . Based on the assumption that at least 35-40% of these inboxes could potentially be mobilized, Datamonitor believes the addressable market for enterprise mobile email is around 260 million subscriptions while operators' revenues from enterprise mobile email and PIM alone will surpass $600 million by 2009.
DataViz
"Many companies are considering mobilizing their workforce around Exchange ActiveSync and its new Direct Push capability. We trust that with our 22 years experience delivering Microsoft Office compatibilitysolutions, combined with the extra assurance afforded by the Symbian Approved mark, they can confidently deploy RoadSync, our Exchange ActiveSync client, on a wide variety of Symbian OS devices today," said Dick Fontana, President, DataViz, Inc.
iAnywhere
"The Symbian Email Validation Programme reflects ease-of-installation and configuration as key areas to drive the penetration of mobile email" said Waldemar Siedlok, Marketing Manager EMEA, iAnywhere. "For example iAnywhere's OneBridge which is scalable to a large number of users, uses a Client Deployment Wizard to preconfigure user settings from a central distribution point making it simple to set up."
Intellisync
“Clearly, Symbian is leading the way towards establishing a global industry standard for mobile email operating systems and we are very pleased to work closely with them in this program,” said Rip Gerber, Chief Marketing Officer for Intellisync Corporation. “As the largest platform-independent provider of mobile email for every segment of the market, we continue to be committed to providing the highest levels of secure device and platform support,” he added.
Quickoffice
"The Symbian Email Validation Program is a major step forward to simplifying the customer experience," said Paul Moreton, Vice President of Product Management, Quickoffice. "Unified email attachment support will provide a consistent and seamless user experience between the leading email vendors’ solutions and our award-winning office suite. Quickoffice is committed to teaming with our email vendor partners to provide Symbian phone users with the most complete email solution available in the market today."
SEVEN
“Symbian OS phones are central to SEVEN’s strategy of driving mass adoption of mobile email. Currently, SEVEN is a leading supporter of Symbian with our mobile email client shipping on over 25 Symbian OS phone models worldwide,” said Ari Backholm, Vice President of Product Development, SEVEN. “The establishment of best practices is good for the end customer. It will enable SEVEN to more efficiently deliver our easy-to-use, feature-rich and differentiated push email client across more phones at a faster pace.”
Visto
“We are excited to be part of an initiative that recognizes Visto’s commitment to providing the best mobile email experience on the broadest range of market-leading devices,” said Jean Tripier, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Visto Corporation. “By providing unprecedented choice and the best user experience, Visto empowers all mobile users to reap the benefits of push email on the mobile phone that best matches their unique requirements.”
Symbian develops and licenses Symbian OS, the operating system that powers today’s most popular data-enabled phones also known as smartphones. Symbian OS is licensed by the world’s leading mobile phone manufacturers and to date, almost 48 million phones based on Symbian OS have shipped worldwide. As of Q3 2005, Symbian OS phone shipments grew more than 131% compared to the same quarter in 2004. According to technology analyst firm Canalys, overall global shipments of smartphones are up 183% year on year in Q3 2005 with Symbian emerging as the market leader.
For more information on the Symbian Email Validation Program please visit:
Symbian Email Validation Program