The consolidation wave among mobile e-mail providers is late, but it's finally made its way to shore. Last year, Nokia bought Intellisync, which many analysts felt would trigger a rash of pick-ups among the half-dozen or so enterprise e-mail providers. That acquisition spree never followed, however, until last week when Motorola announced its intention to buy the No. 2 push e-mail company Good Technology. And that might just be where the acquisition wave ends.

The stage is now set for a three-way battle in the enterprise push e-mail space among Research in Motion — the clear market leader — Motorola and Nokia with Microsoft strategizing in the wings, said Jack Gold, principle analyst of Jack Gold Associates. Nokia and Motorola both desperately want a share of what is becoming a lucrative enterprise market.

Although Nokia has achieved significant success with its Series 60 platform in Europe, the implementation of a high-caliber enterprise e-mail platform eluded it — and to a certain extent, still does — until its acquisition of Intellisync. Motorola's recent success has been driven entirely by slick consumer devices like the RAZR. Sales of its new Q device have been lackluster, but the vendor has demonstrated it is willing to buy its way into the enterprise with its acquisition of Symbol Technologies over the summer and now Good, Gold said.

As for the other e-mail applications providers, they may not be long for this world, Gold said. Seven, Visto and the handful of smaller developers can't match the scale and carrier relationships of the world's top two handset manufacturers, and although technically still a small company, RIM has an established and fiercely loyal user base.

“The wireless e-mail market is maturing, and it's maturing around three key players,” Gold said.

The wild cards will be Palm and Microsoft. Microsoft may be effectively locked out of Motorola and Nokia devices, but it might also be viewed as the savior for the other device manufacturers, big and small, looking for an e-mail alternative, Gold said. Palm's Treo has quickly become the second-most popular device in the e-mail category and is largely responsible for Good's gains against RIM. With Good under Motorola's wing, that relationship is likely to languish, and Palm may begin to rely more heavily on Microsoft's new mobile operating system (OS) and its built-in e-mail support, Gold said.

Ironically, the e-mail space seems to be shaping up exactly as RIM envisioned it, despite the criticism of the company's business model. RIM tied its BlackBerry service to handsets and devices, instead of separating hardware from software, where most of the value in its technology lay. Motorola and Nokia now appear to be doing the same thing, pushing their own pet e-mail platforms.

However, Rick Osterloh, Good's vice president of marketing and products, said there is a critical difference to the approach Motorola is taking to that of RIM. Just as RIM is unbundling its e-mail client for installation in other vendors' devices, Motorola and Good will do the same in order to meet carrier and individual enterprise demands. But RIM's software is entirely proprietary, designed specifically to integrate with RIM's OS, Osterloh said. BlackBerry Connect may be available to other handsets, but it simply doesn't work as well as it does on RIM's devices, while Good Mobile Messaging was built to work over any open system, Osterloh said.

“Our solution was designed to support other parties' hardware platform,” Osterloh said. “We're committed to keeping that open support. Motorola just gives us the opportunity to make our products available worldwide much faster than we would on our own.

THE NEW PUSH E-MAIL MARKET

RIM

The clear market leader with an installed base of 5.5 million BlackBerry wireless e-mail users worldwide.

Nokia

The world's largest maker of smartphones acquired Intellisync in 2005. It continues to support other e-mail services but is expected to push its Intellisync Wireless Email services to the forefront.

Motorola

Known more for its consumer handsets than business services, it acquired Good Technology, the distant runner-up to RIM in the push e-mail space to rectify that.

Microsoft

The software giant may become the e-mail provider of choice for other handset makers in competition with the previous three, starting with Palm and its Treo 650, now that Palm's former OS provider, Good, is part of Motorola.

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