Apple's Exchange hook-up "a pity"

7 Mar 2008 | 11:07 GMT

By Tony Dennis

Apple is a mini Vole anyway

"IT'S A PITY that Apple has decided to go down a proprietary route and licence Activelink, but then Apple is really only a mini Microsoft after all." That's the verdict of Synchronica's CEO, Carsten Brinkschulte.

He was commenting on Apple's recent announcement that support for push email will be built into the next release of its Iphone OS. Which is a clear pitch for business customers, of course.

Once again the move is flawed. Apple has done the deal so the Iphone will work with Microsoft's Exchange. However, that leaves roughly 50 per cent of the market, including those using Lotus Domino (very popular with corporates in Europe) or even Sun's communications suite, out in the cold.

Brinkschulte argues that far more important than the tie-up with Microsoft is Apple's announcement that it has opened up the Iphone platform to outside developers.

That will enable Synchronica to develop a SyncML compatible client for the iPhone which will make it easy for Iphone users to sync their addressbooks and calendars as well as their emails.

Such syncing doesn't just apply to the corporate space, it will work with Google's offerings, too.

Demand for synchronising Iphones with Microsoft Exchange is very definitely there, Brinkschulte revealed. His company set up a free gateway for Iphone users and over 20,000 people signed up for it.

"What this shows is that there's a pent up demand for syncing consumer devices with corporate mail systems, " Brinkschulte added. "That's the space we're playing in because our products can enable 1.5 billion feature phones users out there to access their emails."

So Apple has decided it wants to go after the push email sector pioneered by RIM with the Crackberry. What does RIM do? It goes into the online music business in retaliation.

While Apple was announcing the Microsoft deal, RIM created a partnership with a social networking site called Dip-dive. This site was founded, however, by a musician calling himself will.i.am and the site thus acts as a online music store, too.

Perhaps RIM should licence the technology from Sony and go the whole hog with a Crackberry Walkman. Just a thought. µ

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