According to an article by Elena Malykhina in this week's print issue of InformationWeek:
The BlackBerry may seem ubiquitous in some circles, but fewer than 7 million businesspeople worldwide use mobile E-mail. Imagine 20 times that number--and having to manage 20 times that many PDA users. That's the future many companies face. Nokia's Dave Grannan, general manager of mobile E-mail, made the bold prediction at last week's Interop trade show that 100 million business users of mobile E-mail was "very achievable" in the next four years. The Radicati Group, which earlier this year forecast 39 million mobile E-mail users worldwide by 2008, just upped that forecast to 123 million by 2009, based on updated information from device vendors, network-service providers, and global companies.
But what about the impact of patent infringement litigation on this growth?
Research In Motion, the market leader with 3.7 million mobile E-mail users, is fighting a court injunction that could prevent it from selling and supporting its BlackBerrys in the United States, following a patent lawsuit filed by NTP Inc. RIM and NTP are waiting to hear whether a U.S. District Court will issue an injunction. NTP wants a big payday: It successfully contested in federal court last month a $450 million settlement between the two companies, a deal NTP claims was never completed. RIM's fate also hinges on the U.S. Patent Office, which has issued a preliminary rejection of some of NTP's patent claims after review but hasn't finalized that decision.
After a new spate of legal wrangling between vendors last week, IT managers considering PDAs for E-mail might want to have a chat with corporate counsel first. Visto Inc., a mobile E-mail software company, filed a federal lawsuit claiming Microsoft's Windows Mobile 5.0 violates its patent covering how mobile devices retrieve E-mail from behind company firewalls.
Earlier in the week, Visto licensed NTP's wireless E-mail technology, and NTP took an equity stake in the company. Nokia and mobile software and services vendor Good Technology Inc. also have licensed NTP patents, apparently reinforcing NTP's claim against RIM.
So what about the future? Antone Gonsalves reported:
Research In Motion Ltd...reported on Wednesday that profits in the third quarter rose by a third...The Canadian company said net income for the quarter ended Nov. 26 was $120.1 million, or 61 cents a share, compared with $90.4 million, or 46 cents a share, for the same period a year ago. Revenues rose by 53 percent to $560.6 million from $365.9 million. RIM added about 645,000 new subscribers, ending the quarter with 4.3 million customers.
Ms. Malykhina continues:
...with RIM's and Microsoft's legal snares, it's unclear who'll dominate the market in the next few years. Nokia wants to play in mobile services as well and plans to acquire mobile E-mail software provider Intellisync Corp., which claims it's already second in the mobile E-mail market behind Research In Motion, with a 12% share.
As Dave Werezak, VP of RIM's enterprise business unit, stated, "there's no advantage for anyone to turn the service off."
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