Google has announced that it is boosting its enterprise offerings by providing push email services for iPhone and Windows Mobile users.
Google Sync launched in February this year and enables users to sync calendar and contact details over the air. Until now, iPhone and Windows Mobile users had to update their Gmail inboxes by manually refreshing the app. With this update, new emails will be automatically pushed to a user’s device.
In a post on Google’s Gmail blog, Marcus Foster, product manager, Google Mobile, said: “When we launched Google Sync for Contacts and Google Calendar earlier this year, an over-the-air, always-on connection to sync mail was noticeably absent.”
The move expands Google’s offerings in the enterprise space as the company looks to take on Microsoft as the business application provider of choice. Its Google Apps portfolio has won a number of major contracts recently, including The Guardian News and Media Group and French manufacturing firm Valeo, where 30,000 users switched to the cloud-based apps.
In July this year the company brought Google Apps out of beta, with the aim of enticing users who may have been put off by the beta tag.
“Apps customers who love native mobile applications can now get push mail, contacts and calendar across the major corporate devices: Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Mobile and of course, Android. With the over-the-air, always-on push connections, emails and changes to calendar events and contacts are reflected very quickly on their phones,” said Raju Gulabani, product management director on the Google enterprise blog.
Google now claims around 1.75 million businesses use its Apps platform, mainly in the SMB space.
