Lemonade Threat to BlackBerrys

Isode says that it has released a software update to its M-Box email server that it believes will challenge the dominance of the mobile email market by RIM's Blackberry. Isode's M-Box is now the first commercial email server to incorporate all of the Internet Engineering Task Force's (IETF) recommendations for mobile email.

The IETF established the License to Enhanced Mobile Oriented and Diverse Endpoints (LEMONADE) working group to address the efficiency of email services for bandwidth limited and storage restricted devices, such as mobile phones and PDAs. The solutions offered by the LEMONADE working group are based on open standards, and were published at the end of June 2006.

New functionality for mobile email

The new standards consist of extensions to the existing IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) and SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) email protocols. Three important functions are now possible with Isode's M-Box; quick re-synchronisation, push email and 'forward without download'.

Quick re-synchronisation

All mobile phone users know that the connection will frequently be broken and re-established - such as when a mobile phone user travels through a tunnel. Non-LEMONADE enabled mobile IMAP email requires a bandwidth intensive start-up and re-synchronisation process that must re-check an entire mailbox when connection is lost even momentarily.

Devices using the LEMONADE standards efficiently check for mailbox changes that have occurred only since the last check. This results in radical reductions in both the time taken to re-synchronise the mailboxes and the bandwidth necessary to carry out this task.

Forward without download

The growth of broadband has seen an increase in the file size of email attachments. Unfortunately mobile devices often can't manage such large files effectively. Very often the screen size of mobile devices prohibits easy viewing of attachments. Moreover downloading large attachments is costly and very time consuming.

In such circumstances it would likely be more efficient for the message to be forwarded to another email account or user for review.

Email systems normally require an attachment to be downloaded onto one device before they can be forwarded onto another account. This is a chronic problem for mobile email, resulting in wasted bandwidth, storage, time and money.

M-Box now enables mobile email users to recognise that an email has a large attachment, and decide to forward the attachment onto another email account without downloading the full file.

Growth of mobile email

Mobile email is widely considered to be the most popular function of mobile data services. Strategy Analytics believe the number of mobile email users is set to double in 2006. Detecon report that mobile email is the most popular mobile data service among consumers. Gartner Research states that seventy-five percent of the global workforce will be mobile in 2006, driven primarily by mobile email.

M-Box can be used as either a complete email solution or in 'gateway' mode to give IMAP access to email systems that only offer the traditional POP access."

Posted to the site on 4th October 2006