Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft to Replace Blackberry?
nmccart writes "According to Wired Magazine, Microsoft, along with Cingluar and Vodaphone, is planning to introduce the next generation of Windows Mobile phones that can receive e-mails "pushed" directly from servers that handle a company's messaging. This will allow companies to skip over the cost of installing a Blackberry server, and instead just use the Exchange servers that they are already using. The question becomes, now that this technology is cheaper, will my VP be buying new Windows Mobile enabled cell phones for his entire department just so we can put in more hours?"
I've been using "Push" email with ChatterMail on my Treo 600 and my company's IMAP server for a while now.
No Mickysoft exchange server needed.
(a) First iteration of MS products are seldom stable, RIM is already there.
(b) The existing Crackberry addicts will only switch when their existing units are pried from their cold dead fingers.
(c) I'll contend that the majority of type-A folks that need this already have it in Blackberry, and MS and the cell providers will be trying to get people to switch vs. trying to get lots of new customers to buy in. Smaller potential market, and perhaps already near saturation.
Microsoft can never provide the one BlackBerry 'killer app', and that's PIN messaging. PINs are encrypted end-to-end and never are visible to anyone other than the sender and receiver. As the underlying protocol that carries the other messages (email for example) on the BlackBerry system, they are highly secure and that's why governments trust the system for such messages. But email uses untrusted servers and crosses app boundaries - PINs don't - so only a PIN can be trusted.
For those that don't know, PIN messages are transferred through the BlackBerry network from the sender's 'berry over a dedicated GPRS APN using AES encryption. After that, they are passed up to Waterloo ON where they are routed - without being decrypted - to the destination, where the reverse of the sending occurs. Note that nowhere does the BES or email enter into this.
For savvy but non-technical users (i.e. many executives) who want to keep their conversations private, a PIN simply can't be beat - you've got a commercial service which guarantees delivery (you can check when your PIN arrives with a little 'D' in your sent items) and guarantees security. Plus you don't have to pass around public keys to make it work.
Yes, you can do email any number of different ways. And yes, you could secure messages with AES encryption although nowhere near as easily as this. But to get all of that in a box with ease of use that pleases executives... hard to beat RIM on this one.