Smartphones like the BlackBerry and iPhone represent just 17% of the global market for mobile email, and remain the preserve of business customers who can afford expensive devices and data plans. Analyst firm Informa predicts that there will be 4.81 billion mobile phone subscribers by 2012, with the next billion subscribers coming from emerging markets where low cost mobiles predominate.

Recognizing this enormous potential, Synchronica's mission is to make mobile email a mass-market phenomenon, by concentrating on three separate product offerings - Synchronica Mobile Gateway and Synchronica Mobile Backup.

Synchronica Mobile Gateway Synchronica's Mobile Gateway 4.0 is a revolutionary mobile email and synchronization solution that has been designed to enable mobile operators in developing countries to offer an affordable mobile email service to all their subscribers, both consumers and business users.

Synchronica believes that in emerging markets, where PC ownership is low and fixed-line infrastructure is poor, the mobile phone will become the primary tool for accessing email. Mobile Gateway is the solution of choice for operators in these markets, where lower ARPU must be offset against high volume adoption of mobile data services.

Mobile Gateway works on virtually any phone in the market today. Combining open industry standards including OMA DS, OMA EMN and Push IMAP, with new email-to-SMS, email-to-MMS and push to WAP functionality, Mobile Gateway delivers email to even the most basic mass-market handsets as well as the latest feature phones and Smartphones. Every mobile user can experience the benefits of email without needing a PC. The product also offers real-time connectivity to RSS feeds, allowing users access to newsfeeds and social networking updates. To help ensure low potential support costs and high-take up rates, Mobile Gateway also provides automatic over-the-air configuration of devices. Using OMA CP, users do not have to manually configure their phones, which can be complicated and time-consuming. Users simply select their country, operator, phone maker and model from a menu within the Mobile Gateway portal, and the product automatically sets up their phone ready to receive email.

Mobile Gateway also incorporates unique attachment transcoding technology, which converts compatible attachments into a format which can be viewed on a device. For example, Word, Excel and PDF documents are converted into images, so they can be read on even basic mass-market feature phones. The attachments are also resized to reduce network bandwidth requirements - making it cost-effective for the customer.

Crucially, Mobile Gateway does not require users to install any software onto their handset. It synchronizes with in-built email clients resident within the device, allowing consumers to access email using their existing handset, enhancing its attractiveness to a mass-market audience and helping to ensure swift take-up.

Mobile Gateway provides carrier-grade scalability that supports both consumer and business requirements. Mobile Gateway is compatible with the most popular webmail services - Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, and any ISP mailbox using IMAP or POP3. Mobile Gateway is also compatible with the Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, and Sun Java System Communications Suite servers for those users who wish to keep tabs on their work email.

Synchronica Mobile Backup Finally, Synchronica also provides a SyncML-compatible backup service to compliment the email and PIM synchronization services provided by the Mobile Gateway product family.

Mobile Backup was developed after research revealed that mobile phones have become the sole repository for social and business contacts, and that the loss of a subscriber's phone results in loss of voice revenues for the operator whilst that customer slowly rebuilds a contacts list.

Mobile Backup is Synchronica's PIM backup service that insures against the loss of mobile phone data. Users simply sign up for this service using the Internet, WAP or SMS. Their mobile phone is configured over-the-air using Synchronica's intuitive client provisioning feature, thereby boosting signup rates and bypassing support call centres.

Mobile Backup is sold as a white-label solution to network operators who have discovered that by offering this service; their customers became less likely to stray to competitors. Mobile Backup automatically and unobtrusively backs up mobile phone data the moment it is stored. Data is restored by the user simply synchronizing with the in-built SyncML client over-the-air. Mobile Backup combines the industry standards SyncML (OMA-DS) for backup and restore of PIM data.

Get to know Synchronica CEO Carsten Brinkschulte.