Apple, Android open doors for alternate email providers

The influx of new smartphones isn’t just opening up doors for a new generation of mobile application developers, it's also benefiting developers of the first smartphone app, mobile email. With new platforms like Android and the Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS emerging, mobile email platform providers like Seven and Good Technology are finding new opportunities to sell their services into the higher-end device market.

Once blocked from the smartphone by device makers like BlackBerry that built their OSs around their email client, Seven is starting to see new interest in its mobile email client from OEMs and operators launching Android-based phones. According to Isabelle Dumont, Seven senior director of marketing, the first Android phones uniformly offered up Google (NASDAQ:GOOG)-developed services, such as email, maps and search, but as Android phones become more common, operators and device makers are looking to differentiate their products so they all don’t produce and sell the same "Google Phone" as their competitors.

But because of the flexibility of the Android platform, they can easily switch out core components. Some operators are using Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Bing as the core search engine rather than Google Search. And some, Dumont said, have started replacing Google’s email client with the Seven client.

“Operators are completely heading this direction,” Dumont said. “For them it’s a way to differentiate. They can not only provide the best hardware, but they can choose the best software.”

Orange in Europe has already adopted that approach, using Seven’s email client in the Samsung Galaxy S smartphone, but Dumont said Seven is in talks with many other operators.

For Good Technology, new smartphone platforms have been a boon for its business but not in the same ways as Seven’s, said Dimitri Volkmann, vice president of enterprise product management at Good, formerly Visto, which acquired Good's assets from Motorola last year. Good’s strategy is to bypass the embedded client on the phone and supply application software that creates a secure shell for enterprise services on standard smartphones. The key driver of those services has been the iPhone, which many enterprise users are clamoring for but IT departments are reluctant to support because of security issues, Volkmann said.

After their launch, the iPhone 4 and iPad rocketed to the top of devices being activated by its enterprise customers. While the Good app primarily serves as a lockbox for secure email communications, Good plans to offer secure enterprise versions of common apps within the environment, which functions almost like a platform within a platform, Volkmann said. Its first step will be to offer a secure browser, but it plans to open the platform with an application programming interface, allowing developers to take advantage of the secure channel to build their own enterprise apps in Web 2.0 and Java script.

Volkmann said that Good has always been in the business of providing a secure enterprise platform as an alternative to BlackBerry, but two years ago there were only a few devices that enterprises wanted to use as an alternative to Research in Motion’s (NASDAQ:RIMM) push messaging platform. But with the launch of Android and iOS, the equation has reversed.

“You want a BlackBerry you go with RIM; you want an iPhone you pick us,” Volkmann said. “RIM is always going to be a significant player in the enterprise, but more and more individuals and enterprises look to other platforms.”