Microsoft pushing Hotmail front and center on Android

Microsoft may have ambitions to beat Google with its own smartphone platform, but it’s also taking the battle directly to Google’s Android OS. Today it announced it has contracted with mobile e-mail specialist to build an Android client for Hotmail incorporating Microsoft’s own ActiveSync technology.

Hotmail may have the largest user base of webmail users in the world—360 million users—but Google has a few ingrained advantages when it comes to its own smartphone platform, namely a Gmail account is required to register for many of the Android’s services. There are plenty of hotmail users using Android phones, but until today they could only access their accounts through generic email clients or the Web. With the launch of a dedicated Hotmail client, Microsoft hopes to put its suite of communications services front in center on Android phones, alongside Gmail and other popular clients like Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo Mail.

Microsoft opted to work with Seven to develop the app with Seven rather than build the client itself, tapping into the long relationship Microsoft has with the messaging software firm, said Isabelle Dumont, head of marketing at Seven. Seven has been building carrier-email clients that tap into Hotmail and use Microsoft’s MSP protocol since the dawn of mobile email. It also acts as middleman between carriers and Microsoft in distributing Hotmail access to operator service portals.

“They know us very well,” Dumont said. “They know the client works. They know we have the resources. And by working with us they accelerate their time to market.”

That last element could be key. Social media companies are racing to establish independent mobile presences, and reaping the rewards after they’ve done so. Dumont pointed to the huge uptake in traffic that companies like Facebook experienced once they launched dedicated mobile apps.

The deal also marks a slight shift in Seven’s business model, away from its traditional carrier customer base to the e-mail provider. Seven still makes its money the same way, by licensing each client installed. It’s just being paid by Microsoft rather than the operator. It’s a new avenue that Seven plans to explore aggressively in the future, Dumont said.

For Microsoft, the launch of its client coincides with an aggressive push on Hotmail both on the PC and in mobile. On its official blog on Monday, it announced new features to help eliminate or de-prioritize “graymail,” officially sanctioned email newsletters and notices many customers don’t want to receive. But the biggest measure taken by Microsoft is its switch over to ActiveSync for push email capabilities—a feature typically reserved for enterprise mail accounts using Exchange servers. Microsoft began offering ActiveSync support last week for Hotmail on Windows Phone 7 devices and other smartphones with ActiveSync software, but with the launch of the client, it’s extending those push e-mail capabilities to all Android devices.