Start-up picks from BlackBerry market
Good Technology details its upcoming wireless products, confirming earlier reports of software and hardware that will allow wireless transmission of e-mail messages.
As previously reported, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based start-up's products will be targeted toward large corporations, making it a competitor of Research In Motion. The company has not formally announced its plans, but it expects to issue a release this week. Details of the company's products were posted Tuesday to its Web site.
Good Technology Chief Executive Danny Shader said that given the size of the market, which he estimates to be as high as 15 million users, and given RIM's subscription base of about 321,000, there is plenty of opportunity still left on the table.
Analysts have adjusted their expectations of this once highly promising market. Though analysts believe there is still potential, their impressions of the growth curve are flattening out.
Several companies remain committed to the promise of wirelessly enabled devices, including Palm, Handspring, Microsoft, RIM and now Good Technology. These companies are enhancing their products with wireless capabilities so they can be used as cell phones, two-way e-mail devices and organizers.
Good Technology is setting its targets at what it believes is the most lucrative market, large corporations. That is a similar cry of rival RIM, but Shader said that Good Technology is targeting the bottleneck for growth of these wireless e-mail devices, IT managers.
Good Technology's products include software that enables messaging (GoodLink), data download from Web applications (GoodInfo), and a hardware device (Good G100). The applications can be run on numerous devices and are already being used on RIM BlackBerry devices. The Good Technology G100 device will be available this summer.
Shader said that the key advantage of Good Technology's products is that they don't need to be placed in a cradle to be synchronized. Instead, devices using Good Technology products are synchronized wirelessly.
The company has already signed up customers who have been using Good products. Among them are Silicon Valley Bank, Electronic Arts, VeriSign, Transatlantic Reinsurance and Epiphany.