Mobile Trends 2007 - Mobile eMail and Data Back-up and Restore Set to Reach the Masses

Tunbridge Wells, January 18, 2007. - 2007 will be the year whenboth mobile email and back-up and restore for mobile devices come of age for themass market. We will see mobile email taking off in the consumer space, due to theadvent of industry standards, lower cost devices and falling service plan costs. Andwe will also see consumers paying service providers an additional monthly fee toinsure their mobile phone's address book against loss or theft.

Mobile eMail for the Masses

Until now, mobile email has been mainly limited to the approximately six millionBlackBerry subscribers worldwide who can afford to buy an expensive device and arewilling to accept a costly data plan. But there have been strong signs over thecourse of the last year that the age of mobile email for the masses is almost uponus. The combination of industry standard adoption, lower cost devices and affordableservice plans is set to make mobile email for the mass market a reality in 2007.

One or both of the two complementary mobile data synchronization industry standards- Push IMAP and SyncML - have been adopted by all the major device manufacturers andmiddleware vendors in 2006, which sets the scene for standards-based push emailbetween heterogeneous mobile devices. There have also been some innovative, low costdevices launched in the last six months, such as IXI Mobile's OGO, which has beendesigned from the ground up for mobile messaging.

With such a wealth of mass market devices that support mobile email now available,the time is right for mobile email pricing plans to fall, to attract more customers.And as customer numbers increase, we will see mobile email start to replace textmessages, becoming the next generation SMS. Interestingly, SMS messages arerelatively expensive when compared on a 'per character' basis to alternative formsof messaging such as mobile email, so data tariffs per character for mobile emailshould not prove prohibitive to even the most cost-conscious of mobile phones users.

Back-up and Restore for the Masses

We also expect to see a surge in demand from consumers for a back-up and restorefacility for their mobile devices in 2007. Already back in 2004 the research groupZelos found that 15 % of mobile subscribers expressed a strong need for a mechanismto back up contact data. This is because consumers - and particularly the MySpacegeneration - depend increasingly on their mobile devices as the primary repositoryfor vital information such as phones numbers and addresses.

In this scenario, if a person's phone is lost or stolen, all his or her friends' andfamily's contact details disappear with it. For this fast-growing section ofsociety, it is the information on the phone, rather than the phone itself, which isof value to them.

We will therefore see an increase in demand for a low-cost facility from serviceproviders - a kind of insurance policy for your contact information - which willallow consumers to back-up and restore their contacts information over the air. Aswell as providing a safety net for consumers who lose their phones, a back-up andrestore service also makes upgrading to a new phone easier. Customers simply use theback-up and restore facility to transfer their contact information and saved SMSmessages over the air to their new phone.

Conclusion

In summary, 2007 will see the mass market benefiting from recent advances in datasynchronization and messaging. Mobile email will start to replace some of thebillions of SMS messages that get sent every month by consumers and more serviceproviders will begin to offer their subscribers a robust over-the-air back-up andrestore facility for their contacts information.

More about Carsten Brinkschulte, CEO Synchronica plc: http://syncml.notlong.com

Abo ut Synchronica

Synchronica develops and markets synchronization and device management solutions forservice providers, operators, device manufacturers, and enterprises. Its productportfolio ranges from data synchronization (OMA DS) to device management (OMA DM)and firmware update over the air (FUMO / FOTA). Synchronica has a strong trackrecord in the mobile industry including several live carrier-grade installations.Products include the SyncML DM Server which enables operators and devicemanufacturers to build automated customer-care systems and the award-winning SyncMLGateway which enables seamless synchronization of corporate data including PusheMail using OMA DS and Push IMAP. Its latest offering, Mobile Manager, enablesmobile operators and application service providers (ASPs) to offer mobile devicemanagement as a hosted solution to enterprise customers. Headquartered in the UKwith offices in Germany (Berlin), USA (Reston and Seattle) and Asia (Hong Kong).Synchronica plc is a public company listed on the London Stock Exchange (AIM:SYNC).More information is available at http://www.synchronica.com

Fo r more information, please contact:

Nicole Meissner, CMOSynchronica plcTel.: +44 1892 552 780nicole.meissner@synchronic a.com

Source: Express-Press-Release.com

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