[Tom]

Companies wanting to offer their mobile staff "push e-mail" over wireless networks are being offered a plethora of options following a busy week of launches.


Push e-mail sees messages automatically forwarded to a user’s mobile device once they have been received by a mail server. Analyst firm Gartner has predicted that by 2008, 80% of employees will use wireless e-mail.


Sproqit, Visto and Siemens announced systems to rival Research in Motion’s Blackberry. There are more than 20,000 RIM Enterprise Servers worldwide


The Sproqit solution is designed to integrate with Microsoft Outlook, and the first product will allow messages to be sent from a PC to a mobile device via a Sproqit server. This service costs £8 a month.


At the Symbian mobile developers conference last week, Visto launched its Mobile 5.0 push


e-mail product, which relies on the company’s Constantsync technology to push e-mail, contact updates and calendar changes to mobile devices.


Visto has signed up 10 operators to sell the system and said it was in a good position to challenge RIM.


Brian Bogosian, Visto’s chief executive, said, "We have strong mobile operator partnerships,


the financial strength and the patented intellectual property that will allow us to surpass RIM’s total subscriber base in 2005."


In the third push e-mail announcement, Siemens said it will be promoting a new system through operators.


Stephen Drake, an analyst at IDC, said, "Wireless e-mail is the most pervasive enterprise mobile application and a critical entry point for mobile operators and enterprises."

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