Posts Tagged ‘windows mobile’

Google Adds Push Mail to Sync for iPhone, Windows Mobile

In a blog post from the Google Enterprise Apps team, Google has announced that syncing iPhones and Windows Mobile phones with Gmail via ActiveSync now allows users to sync mail as a push account. Until now, users had to use ActiveSync (or Google Sync as Google likes to call it on the server-side) for calendars and contacts and exclude mail from syncing. Then the user had to setup their Gmail account as a separate IMAP account on the iPhone/Win Mo to get their email. It appears that push email is available to both the Enterprise and free personal account customers.

As far as I’m aware, we still have no word on whether Gmail will support some of the more advanced features of ActiveSync the way that Exchange (and now Zimbra 6.0) can. So far, Exchange competitor Zimbra can do things like initiate wipes to mobile devices, lock devices when an incorrect password is entered, and pause (and resume) syncing to the device.

Gmail has differentiated itself from the market, however, as being the only free email provider (that I’ve heard of) that offers push mail, contacts, and calendars via ActiveSync (or other similar way to your choice of device). Others (like Hotmail) aren’t even offering IMAP access to external mail clients to free customers.

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Sep 22nd, 2009

Google Releases Sync Software for iPhone and Windows Mobile

Google has released an application called Google Sync that will allow users of Google Calendar and Gmail to sync their contacts and calendars directly to the native calendaring and address book applications on their iPhones and Windows Mobile devices. The company released a similar application for Blackberry users last year and is extending that functionality to more users by offering the iPhone and Windows Mobile software. They are also now supporting phones that support SyncML for two-way contact synchronization as well. The product is being released as beta, but of course, I have to add the standard joke and ask, “what free Google product isn’t?”

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Filed under News : Comments (3) : Feb 10th, 2009

President Obama to Switch to Windows Mobile?

Obama’s addiction to his Blackberry has been a point of interest to a lot of tech blogs during the election season as well as so far in his Presidency. Obama has made it clear in the past that he would really like to keep his Blackberry, but has not been allowed to thus far. Randy Siegel of Microsoft has cited the fact that data going from the email or PIM server has to pass through RIM’s network as a reason to not choose the Blackberry platform. The reason is that RIM is based out of Canada and the President’s data would have to cross to foreign soil and can’t be trusted. Microsoft is suggesting that Obama use a Sectéra Edge, a Windows Mobile based device that has been certified by the NSA, something that RIM can’t say about their devices.

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Jan 26th, 2009

Ballmer On the Separation of Software and Hardware

In another part of the recent the Churchill Club event I talked about a few days ago, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talked for a bit on mobile phones and hinted at Microsoft’s strategy on competing with Google.

Well, okay, it’s more than a hint. Microsoft is depending upon being able to license its mobile OS to cell phone manufacturers to be able to beat out competitors Nokia, RIM, and Apple (and Palm if their new Linux-based OS ever arrives) just like it did to beat out IBM, Apple, and others. Using this strategy it was able to accomplish over 90% even now, many years later. I would agree to a certain degree that allowing its OS to mobile phone makers, Microsoft could create a potentially larger market for itself, however I’m not sure that the potential gains are worth the risk.

What makes the desktop market different than the mobile phone market? It’s quite simple: standards. If you give me two different phones from two different manufacturers, chances are the key layout is different, the power cord is different, the screens have different resolutions, and so on. Give me two different PCs from different manufacturers and I don’t necessarily have the same screen resolutions, but I have standards-based peripherals (keyboards, mice), internal components, and even network connection types. Often, on top of the differences in cell phone makers we have phones that have been customized to each provider.

So what benefits do keeping the software locked into a hardware and locked into a provider give us? This too is pretty simple, support and ease of use. The iPhone has been met with a significant amount of criticism since its only available for AT&T and only on the Apple hardware (unless unlocked, of course). But, at the end of the day when I call support because my phone doesn’t work the only questions I have to answer are whether it’s a first or second generation and what size. The developers, support personnel, and end users are never met with surprises. RIM’s Blackberry devices are close, though they have a much wider variety of devices for different types of users.

Why then should Microsoft take this stance and not lock its software to a piece of hardware? For the same reasons it was successful in the PC market. It doesn’t matter if I buy an HP, Dell, Lenovo, or whatever, more than likely it has Windows on it. Sure, nowadays we can buy PCs with Linux (a good move, I think) and occasionally (questionably) OS X, but that’s more of a recent trend in the mainstream market. Having a ton of phones with Windows Mobile on them makes it much easier for Microsoft to get its product in front of end-users. As we learned from the success of Internet Explorer, it doesn’t matter what’s a better product, it’s what comes on the device “out of the box” that most users will use. This also gives them the opportunity to push more users to its search engine and advertising market which really is what it’s all about.

Any company that takes the plunge and licenses its OS on any hardware also takes a risk in compatibility issues. Both Linux vendors and Microsoft have found this out the hard way on the desktop side. Linux has been plagued for years with driver issues since very few manufacturers make drivers for Linux for their hardware. Vista was hit hard with this especially in its first year. Most of the driver issues seem to be disappearing, but Microsoft had a lot of trouble dealing with hardware vendors right away and took a beating from Apple. They apparently have learned their lesson and are hoping to not make the same mistake again on Windows 7.

From either perspective, licensing a mobile OS to a non-standardized marketplace can be a risk. Microsoft has seen some success in the past, of course, but will it eventually win out using the same tactics of its day of old like Ballmer says? It’ll be interesting to see. Microsoft has had recent failures in keeping quality drivers and hardware support in consumers hands and Apple was right on their heels with its hardware-OS bundle and benefited from Vista’s shortcomings.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (1) : Sep 29th, 2008