14 DAY TRIAL // Recently, Research in Motion (RIM) has decided to lower its outlook for subscriber additions for the rest of this fiscal year. RIM now expects third-quarter subscriber additions to be 8 percent lower than its previous forecast. RIM seems to be aggressively and desperately promoting to further build its customer base. Suzan DelBene, Microsoft's Vice president of marketing for mobile and embedded devices, says that RIM's BlackBerry Enterprise Server is operations-heavy. In order for a BlackBerry to access corporate data behind a firewall, the request from the BlackBerry must navigate a maze of software (a network operations center and additional middleware) before it even reaches the e-mail server.
Meanwhile, in the first quarter of 2006, Microsoft will start shipping upgrade to Windows Mobile 5.0 that will contain e-mail push component. The latest versions of Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Windows Mobile enable people who use both operating systems to access their e-mail without any additional software. Push e-mail market will be a very important battleground next year, not only for Microsoft, but also for Nokia, because both companies want to bring RIM and their BlackBerry down.
However Nokia, despite licensing Server ActiveSync protocols from Microsoft, is not using the same means and to actually use e-mail push with MS Exchange you will need a Windows Mobile 5.0 device. Symbian devices from Nokia will not be able to offer push e-mail with MS Exchange. Unlike RIM, Nokia allows basic e-mail access free of charge, although it does demand licenses for access to other corporate applications.
Exorbitant costs have long been an issue among BlackBerry users. Both the Nokia and Microsoft solutions promise cash economies along with service enhancements.