Orange SA (London/Paris: OGE) and
HP Inc. (NYSE: HPQ) are the first to introduce smartphone support for the
Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) push email update to its Windows mobile operating system.
The push upgrade will be on the new hw6900 smartphone, which HP says it will start shipping this month in Europe and Asia. "It's part of the OS that ships with the device," an HP spokesman tells
Unstrung. The hw6900 will arrive stateside later this year.
And U.K. operator Orange has a software download that updates its SPV C600 smartphone with the AKU2 email code, although there is already some question over
how well it works.
Palm Inc. , meanwhile, is planning a downloadable ROM update for its new Windows-powered Treo 700w smartphone, but a company spokesman couldn't yet say how that would be implemented or when it would be available.
Microsoft first showed off its push email capabilities at the 3GSM show last month. (See
Microsoft Gets Pushy.) The update has been widely ancipated as the move that will launch Redmond directly into competition with
BlackBerry in the hotly contested mobile email market.
Network administrators will also need to install the Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 service pack 2 updates to enable enterprise users to push email from their corporate inbox to their phone.
— Dan Jones, Site Editor,
Unstrung
