Synchronica unveils 'any handset' mobile messaging suite

Friday, 26 February 2010 00:00  |  James Barton

Synchronica has unveiled Mobile Gateway 5, a complete mobile messaging suite that enables operators to offer push email and synchronisation, instant messaging, social networking services, and web feeds to consumers and business users regardless of the handset they use.

Mobile Gateway 5 enables operators to provide a broad range of mobile messaging services from a single platform aimed at increasing data usage and subscriber loyalty. Mobile Gateway enables users to connect to existing internet communities, such as Facebook, Gmail, Google Talk, and web feeds, driving traffic and user uptake, but also enables operators to create their own email and instant messaging communities.

Based entirely on open industry standards, Mobile Gateway 5 is a clientless solution which works on virtually any handset in use today, ensuring fast take-up in a large addressable market.

New key features introduced with Mobile Gateway 5 include:

• Mobile instant messaging - Mobile Gateway 5 enables users to connect to their existing IM services, such as Windows Live Messenger, ICQ, AIM, Google Talk, and Facebook Chat. To encourage subscriber loyalty, operators can also offer their users a carrier-hosted IM community to chat, send pictures, and see others' status. Mobile Gateway 5 enables aggregation of up to five IM accounts and leverages the built-in IMPS client of most mobile phones from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and other manufacturers and provides a downloadable IMPS client for J2ME-enabled handsets. The Mobile Gateway IM community can also be accessed from a PC or smartphone, using any XMPP client like Apple's iChat.
• Mobile SNS - Mobile Gateway provides clientless push SNS for a wide range of popular social networking services, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, to the built-in email clients of smartphones and mass market feature phones. Mobile Gateway even extends social networking to entry-level phones by sending feeds and status updates as MMS or SMS. By simply replying to messages, users can comment on, and 'like' friends' photographs, post status updates, and wall posts and instantly upload and share photographs taken from the mobile phone's camera.
• Web feeds - Mobile Gateway 5 allows users to subscribe to live web feeds from a list of operator-defined news feeds (e.g. ESPN, BBC, Al Jazeera), as well as from any RSS-enabled site of personal or business interest. Updates are pushed automatically as emails into a separate mailbox on any phone supporting the IMAP and OMA EMN or ActiveSync industry standards. On entry-level phones, Mobile Gateway sends web feeds as an SMS or MMS including text and pictures.

The email-to-SMS, email-to-MMS, and push-to-WAP gateways of Mobile Gateway 5 connect literally any phone to email, IM, and SNS - ideal for emerging markets where PC-based access remains limited and entry-level devices continue to dominate. The carrier-grade solution delivers mobile email, IM, web feeds, and SNS through established technologies, such as SMS and MMS for basic handsets, as well as via the industry standard IMPS, IMAP, and ActiveSync for mid- to high-end handsets.

According to a recent report from Frost & Sullivan on the mobile IM market in Africa and Latin America, the total market for mobile instant messaging solutions is estimated to grow to almost 500 million users by 2015 from almost zero in 2008. This represents a compound annual growth rate of 54 percent over the next five to six years in these regions alone.

Carsten Brinkschulte, CEO of Synchronica, comments: "With Mobile Gateway 5, we are providing a one-stop solution for next-generation mobile messaging…We are using a clientless, industry standards-based approach to connect users to email, IM, SNS, and web feeds - offering a true mass market solution with the largest possible addressable market and service uptake. Mobile Gateway 5 provides operators in particular in emerging markets with a solution that can significantly increase revenues from data traffic and can help to combat the number one problem - churn."

A recent report by Informa estimates the mobile social networking market will undergo substantial growth over the next three years. At the end of 2008, there were approximately 92.5 million mobile social networking users globally, with conservative estimates putting this number at 641.6 million by 2013.

Mobile Gateway provides push email and PIM synchronization for consumer mail services such as Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail / Windows Live, as well as for business servers, such as Microsoft Exchange, Sun Java Communications Suite, and Lotus Domino. Unlike other solutions, Mobile Gateway does not require users to install additional software on the handset or behind the firewall.

The combination of this zero footprint architecture with an additional over-the-air provisioning module for service activation increases adoption rates and improves the overall user experience. Mobile Gateway 5 uses open industry standards, such as Push IMAP and SyncML, to integrate with the native email and synchronization clients built into more than 1.5 billion devices from major handset manufacturers including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola, and others.

For mobile IM, Mobile Gateway 5 supports the standards IMPS and XMPP and connects to the IM client built into handsets from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and other leading device manufacturers.

More info:

• www.synchronica.com

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