Critical Path is developing a push email service allowing recipients to prioritize mails by subject.
The San Francisco-based ISV launched the Memova brand in February as an umbrella for its email, SMS and PIM, and security offerings to network operators. The rationale behind Memova Mobile is to enable push email from any mailbox to any phone, said CTO and EVP of marketing Mike Serbinis. If a user has one or more mailboxes with an ISP, a portal or an ASP, they can get mail pushed to them without installing any additional software on their phone, he said. It’s a couple of clicks to push email.
Critical Path is targeting what Mr Serbinis called the non-BlackBerry market, which can be users at SMEs or larger organizations that don’t want to spend money on an expensive handset but still require a degree of connectivity, at least to web and ISP mail, if not a corporate email server.
The emphasis on efficient reception of email is the reason Critical Path is honing its ability to prioritize what mail it pushes, moving from sender- to content- and context-based classification in the next release.
Critical Path is a classic example of a boom-era company that held an IPO (in 1999) then grew by acquisition, moving well beyond its initial focus, and has now been obliged to concentrate again on its core competencies. However, at least some of the technology it picked up during the boom is still relevant. For example, Mr Serbinis said its directory technology is of use in messaging deployments.
By targeting the mass market for mobile email, Critical Path is avoiding futile attempts to claw market share away from Research In Motion with its BlackBerry service. However, it is by no means alone. Companies such as Visto and Seven are also moving down into the feature phone space with work on Java platforms, for example, and the likelihood is that there will be a lot more players hoping to address some of the 600 million mailboxes not yet mobilized by RIM and its high-end competitors.
