Vodafone will of course continue to offer the BlackBerry service, which has gained huge mindshare and boasts 2.5 million users worldwide, but with some 600 million corporate emails out there still not mobilized, it is no surprise that it should seek to increase its market share in the space.
Furthermore, like all major mobile operators, Vodafone has a horror of other brands enjoying higher billing on any of its products or services than its own: its spats with handset manufacturers, followed by the deal announced at CeBIT with Toshiba, exemplify this mindset.
In this context, Visto is the perfect fit for its requirements, offering white-label push email technology that it can then brand as its own. Newbury, UK-based Vodafone has already launched services based on Visto technology in Germany, Italy and, via associate carrier Elisa, in Finland, while Vodafone Spain launched yesterday.
Being a software-only product, Visto Mobile also enables Vodafone to offer the service to regular mobile phones, rather than relying on the proprietary BlackBerry devices it must sell in order for its subscribers to get the RIM-based service. The services launched to date around Europe are available on the VPA 3 (provided by Chinese ODM suppliers High Tech Computer) and the Sony Ericsson P910i, with plans for the Nokia 6630.
Brian Bogosian, CEO of Redwood Shores, California-based Visto, said the company’s technology supports mobile operating systems from Microsoft (Pocket PC and Smartphone, now converging as Windows Mobile), palmOne (Palm OS) and Symbian, as well as Java phones. In what may be only mild hyperbole, he predicted that the Vodafone decision signals a change in the way people use their mobile devices. Mr Bogosian argued that BlackBerry has just 2.5 million users worldwide but is a very expensive, closed and proprietary system. Our approach will see the beginnings of mass adoption.
Visto and other companies in push email such as fellow Americans Good Technology and Seven Networks (which just bought Finnish competitor Smartner Information Systems) make their living on the bet that carriers will want to have an own-brand alternative to RIM.
Visto also claims that its ConstantSync synchronization technology is superior to any of the competition’s in that it pushes out the email (devoid of attachments, of course) to the device without waiting for the user to go to its server and pull it down to their device. In addition, said Mr Bogosian, we’re a real-time, very secure service in which no data ever leaves the source. We don’t cache or store it, so the data’s never sitting in someone else’s data center.
Still, it is clearly the white-label nature of its offering that has endeared Vodafone to Visto, a deal which represents a huge fillip to the tiny challenger to billion-dollar RIM. To date the only European carrier it has been able announce a relationship with is KPN Mobile in Holland, though it has also struck deals with AT&T Wireless [now being absorbed by Cingular], Nextel [now part of Sprint] and Rogers in Canada.
Vodafone, as the biggest international operator (the world’s no. 1 in subscribers is in China), clearly raises Visto’s profile in the industry, even if the ISV’s business model is to be transparent to end users. Mr Bogosian said the Visto technology will be the basis of services in all Vodafone properties, with multiple launches every month, deriving audible pleasure from the fact that the agreement with Vodafone means we’ll be in Japan before RIM.
To be fair, Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM has shown signs of diversifying beyond its end-to-end proprietary hard- and software model. It has cut licensing deals for its software with the likes of handset giant Nokia, but Mr Bogosian dismissed such announcements as interesting PR, pointing to the fact that last year’s financials from RIM showed it was still dependent on hardware for 66% of total revenue.
