Improved Mobile E-Mail on the Horizon

The combination of an upcoming feature pack for Windows Mobile (WM) 5.0—Microsoft’s newest version of its OS platform for Pocket PCs (PPCs) and Smartphones—and the upcoming Service Pack 2 for Exchange Server 2003 will significantly improve Microsoft’s e-mail solution for Windows Mobile devices. The enhancements will address user complaints that the Microsoft solution is still inferior to that of competitor Research in Motion (RIM) and its BlackBerry devices. However, to get these improvements users will have to buy new WM 5.0 devices, which will only begin shipping in the third quarter of 2005.

(For details on the WM 5.0 platform, see “Windows Mobile 5.0 Points the Way to Device Convergence“.)

Current Approach Not Ideal

Many users, especially business users, want e-mail and calendar items on their mobile devices to stay synchronized within a few minutes with the corresponding items on their e-mail server.

Using the built-in ActiveSync utility, Windows Mobile devices (PPCs and Smartphones) can periodically initiate a wireless data connection to the Internet and poll the Exchange server for new items. However, this polling approach has two problems: polling intervals can be no shorter than five minutes, and each poll creates a fair amount of network traffic—very undesirable for users with data plans that charge by the amount of data they transfer.