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The service will be paid for through advertisements that will be appended to messages. For now, users will only see the ads when they send a message, not when they read e-mails. And the ad will be based on a user's profile after she has filled out a short questionnaire about the type of advertising she wants to see. The user can also accept advertisements based on keywords, for which she will receive points, and if the subscriber accepts full advertising, she will get to use premium features for free.
"Freedom Mail is a good idea, but they have a big road to climb," says Ken Dulaney, vice president of mobile computers at Gartner, an information and technology research and advisory company based in Stamford, CT. "The fact that they don't have a mainstream desktop e-mail user group and they are not a well-known name are strikes against them." And, suggests Dulaney, don't expect mobile operators to help the free download service.
Another global mobile push e-mail service provider, Emoze, launched a free mobile service in January. Its service gives users the option of downloading its software to their PC, which will serve as a connector pushing e-mails and data to their mobile device. Alternatively, users can employ a central server, installing the Emoze mobile client, and provide their Outlook Web Access credentials, which are encrypted and stored locally on their mobile device. The company also plans to launch a corporate version for a fee in the near future.
While it remains uncertain which strategy will dominate the market, the opportunities are clear. "The wireless market is very active and probably the best place for mobile operators to make money on data because it is something everyone wants," says Dulaney. "Wireless e-mail is a certainty, and eventually, just as every cell phone has voice, every cell phone will have e-mail."
what Freedom Mail is doing is interesting, but IMO wont be that useful in most cases.
Freedom Mail requires web access. if the cell phone already has web access, then it can probably access web mail (gmail, hotmail, yahoo mail, etc) unless the browser has some limitations (javascript, etc). in this case, Freedom Mail would be simply making access easier/faster.
now, if you had an email account that didnt have web access (which is becoming more and more rare), _then_ Freedom Mail would be useful (assuming it can access standard POP3/IMAP/etc accounts, which i'm sure it can).
but still, this requires you to give you email password to a third party company, which IMO is a very bad idea. there's only two places where a password should be stored: in your head and on the original server, encrypted. the last thing you should be doing is giving it to some random company.
Passwords are stored encrypted in your mail client but most often they are transmitted in clear over pop and sometimes imap connections on network anyone can spy with tools accessible to any script kid. All blackberry users access their pop accounts and give away their password to RIM to do it on their behalf. Also many web based email services allow to add 3rd party mailboxes and they also require users to provide their mail account passwords. So in theory you may be right but practically everything shows that the theory you expose does not translate well.
Reading Ms. Sauser's article, we found there to be several false statements concerning emoze which we feel need to be rectified.
"Its service gives users the option of downloading its software to their phone so that they can access the company's server"
1st of all, when emoze users use our service to push emails to their device their emails are never routed through our servers. The function of the PC Connector is to tunnel their outlook emails, contacts, calendar and tasks via their own PC. This insures the highest security possible as NO data is stored and forwarded.
Alternatively, for users with (OWA) emoze allows you to push your emails and data via (OWA) Outlook web access - to hundreds of mobile devices. This is also a 100% free service, removing the need for a PC Connector altogether!
Emoze has always been and will remain a free service, not supported by any advertising. Once your emails are synced to your device you can reply and read them at any time giving you real access to your PIM anywhere.
Freedomail Cons:
- Being forced to put up with advertising to view your emails.
- Necessity of web Access to view your emails, no GPRS connection, no access to your emails!
Oh cool, so no GPRS and email from Emoze will arrive magically to the handset? But it will get to my PC right?
PC connector is a rehash of 90's email forwarding.......next
Since the publication of this article, I have recieved updated information about the Emoze service from the company. Thus, the article now reflects this information.
NTT DoCoMo introduced cheap mobile mail with its i-mode service in Febrary 1999. By the end of 2001 more than 70% of Japanese subs had this mail.
there is a difference between real email and short messages which is what DoCoMo launched. The number of characters there was 500 vrs some 180 characters (SMS) here.
They have 3rd party companies that operate like fredoom mail that have about 300k subscribers paying $3 per month for pulling email.
With all due respect,freedom mail sounds like an older version of MeOnGo. An email service designed around one year ago! whats more, it has better features too, like for example,besides being free and easy to use,and allowing access to multiple email accounts, and viewing attachments, it has SMS alerts,allows group configurations,data integrity,Secure Hash Algorithm with cryptographic hash but with a 160-bit message digest function.
Try it for yourself at: http://www.meongo.com
Tried a few mobile email clients, flurry mail is ok but can not beat Tricast Mail, has the best UI by far from all the ones i have tried. Email download is very fast, found set up to be straight forward. www.tricastmedia.com
Found this and you don't need to install a client. I've tried a few of these clients and there is always something that doesn't work right. Nothing beats this. They send you a text message everytime you receive an email with the sender info and a link that I click on to open the browser on my phone. It takes me straight into my inbox. I can even open attachments.
www.meemo.com
With support for most of the popular webmail and POP email services, and mobile web access as only requirement, Renzoo from UK (www.renzoo.co.uk) gives you the same functionality.
Renzoo also includes some other cool features such as SMS alerts with direct link to the important emails that can be additionally coupled with Skype presence status to automatically switch it on or off depending are you in front of your desktop or on the go.
Another interesting feature is a email forward to the other mobile phone and support for email-to-sms gateways for sending link to new emails. Preview for attached .doc, .xls, .pdf is also included.
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luiss
3 Comments
Real Push Mail!
I must say that Emoze method of pushing mail is an old method called relaying mail from your PC. So your home PC has to be on all the time to get the email and If your PC goes down bye bye email. Frankly, not in the league of real push email services like blackberry or for that matter Freedom Mail.
Also Mr. Dulaney misses the whole point of push mail on devices. 95% of the users in this country do not have blackberry device or for that matter handsets that can handle Yahoo or google downloadable Java apps to get mail.
His comment "The fact that they don't have a mainstream desktop e-mail user group and they are not a well-known name are strikes against them." Is not only dumb but shows a lack of understanding of the general mobile evolution of handsets and apps. This kind of thinking belongs to the Microsoft era of the early 90's
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freedomail
2 Comments
Re: Real Push Mail!
My remark related to Gartner's analyst comment is that many email services and email clients came out of nowhere with no previous user base as a source(Hotmail being the best example). Consumers are not as attached to their exchange servers since they don't have any, so their loyalty to a mail client or server is not strong enough to impose any client on their phone at this point. When it comes to Exchange server and outlook clients loyalty, it was not enough to stop RIM, also coming from planet mars, to catch the mobile corporate email market by storm. So really, let's face it, making prediction in the world of wireless email for consumers is not an exercise that is easy but definitely prone to shortcomings. One major shortcoming being the lack of information on the subject. Hopefully Freedom Mail will enrich the data available to analysts to refine their predictions. The ones available from mobile carriers regarding wireless email for consumers are not available to analysts because large carriers keep their information confidential. It leaves not much to analyze I guess.
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