Handango, Comverse penetrate BlackBerry

CANNES, FRANCE--Handango is targeting new customers on both sides of the Atlantic, announcing at the 3GSM World Congress new versions of its software download client for BlackBerry and BenQ devices. Comverse also separately announced at the show that its voicemail management solution will be integrated directly into BlackBerry’s messaging client.

The BlackBerry software puts Handango’s InHand client into all the major North American and European wireless operating systems, but the product did not include a partnership with Research in Motion, BlackBerry’s creator and the primary manufacturer of BlackBerry devices. Handango is releasing the client directly to the public on its Web site as well as targeting the software at its current and potential carrier customers.

While Handango licenses its client to carriers, its primary business is that of a content aggregator. It brings together, applications, content and games from dozens of developers and publishers, and optimizes them to perform consistently across multiple platforms. Its customer base mainly comes directly to Handango and much of its success has been into more traditional PDAs, but it has made headway into the smartphone space and has one major carrier customer, Sprint PCS (supporting its non-Java-based smart devices). Manufacturers have also put their weight behind the company, Sony Ericsson and Sierra Wireless having both licensed the client for their hardware. BenQ became the latest vendor this week to endorse the platform, announcing it will ship its P50 and P30 UIQ-powered smartphones with the InHand client pre-loaded. BenQ is also branding the client, calling it the BenQ shop.

Handango may not have struck a direct partnership with BlackBerry, but Comverse has. Comverse announced Tuesday that the RIM has agreed to incorporate its Visual Voice Mail solution directly into its popular messaging applications. The solution allows customers to manage SMS, email and voicemail from the same message list, giving them the same ability to manipulate the contents of their voicemail box that they have with email.

“Later on we believe we can provide other services to the solution,” said Ramesh Barasin, president of Comverse Americas. “We can expand into video messaging, add presence and even GPS services.”

The integration of the visual voice mail solution is now done on the client level. Comverse’s solution is housed on a separate server linked to a carrier’s voicemail, generating individual messages from every voicemail received on a smartphone or wireless PDA. Client software then merges those ‘voice’ messages with the BlackBerry messaging solution, creating a unified mailbox. The architecture allows carriers to deploy the service alongside their existing BlackBerry servers, but Comverse has also developed a converged solution that integrates SMS, e-mail and voice mail on one network element. Either way the service looks the same for the end customer, Barasin said. Right now the service is optimized for carrier’s own voice mail, but as IMS and VoIP services make their way onto the network, Barasin said, carriers will be able to integrate the service with business voice mail solutions also, creating a truly unified mailbox.