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Microsoft Hopes to Dethrone RIM in Mobile Email Market

6:55 am on February 17, 2006 | Category: Mobile Devices, Web Services

Microsoft, which released its new mobile push email software earlier this week, seems ready to use a highly competitive pricing system to undermine Ontario-based RIMâ€™s dominance of the wireless email market.

â€œThey would like to get these devices in the hands of people beyond those RIM has been able to reach,â€ according to Directions analyst, Peter Pawlak.

The software giantâ€™s new service will allow existing enterprise-class users of Windows Mobile 5.0 and Exchange Server 2003 to obtain corporate email technology at no extra charge, without paying several thousand dollars for their own mobile email server.

The service may also eventually be extended to offer more functionality than RIM, with additional features like instant messaging and even Voice over IP.

â€œThe Microsoft platform is very competitive with RIM devices, and is attractive as a lower cost alternative,â€ Pawlak commented.

A report from Gartner, however, reminds us that Microsoft doesnâ€™t have an easy task ahead of them in upsetting the lead of RIMâ€™s BlackBerry device. The Ontario-based mobile device maker currently holds a 20.8% market share of the global PDA market, making them the overall leading seller of such devices.

Of course, there is also the added factor that both RIM and Microsoft are currently facing legal problems from intellectual property companies such as NTP and Visto, which have allied in their ongoing legal efforts. Whichever of the two giants can shake their legal troubles first will likely have a head start in their quest for mobile email supremacy.

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