As competition for dominance in the e-mail push and application sync technology market heats up, recent South African stats show Intellisync to be dominating the South African market over BlackBerry, by almost double.
The figures are based on the back of information received from Vodacom and MTN, showing that the companies` combined sales of BlackBerry for corporate and consumer services did not amount to more than 8 000 users or licences as at the beginning of the first quarter of 2006.
LayerOne, a subsidiary of Internet Solutions and the Africa distributor of Intellisync, has confirmed that Intellisync licence sales amount to approximately 15 000 licences in the corporate market alone. LayerOne expects this number would have been far higher if it had also released a consumer service to the South African market.
"The Intellisync push e-mail, file and application sync product has been very successful in South Africa and has competed strongly with BlackBerry, which is Intellisync`s largest local and even global competitor. Even though both offerings are very capable, we feel that Intellisync has picked up more of the market because of the wider range of devices supported for mobile e-mail, wider range of sync solutions for different types of mobile applications, as well as the far more aggressive pricing strategy. Intellisync has also been available in South Africa for longer than BlackBerry," comments Stuart Hardy, MD of LayerOne.
Nokia, the world`s largest mobile device manufacturer, recently bought Intellisync`s global operations which gives LayerOne further confidence that the Intellisync technology will be taken into the market more aggressively than it was before, and may allow it to get the same airtime as BlackBerry does in South Africa. LayerOne expects that aside from more aggressive marketing, better economies of scale may see the price of these services reduce widening the potential client base for LayerOne and competitive products.
Share
