Funambol and 1&1 shake up the mobile market
Funambol is quickly proving that it will own the mobile market.
Funambol, the mobile open-source leader, just nailed a major win with 1&1, the world's largest web hosting service, to provide it with push email and a PIM (personal information management, including address book and calendar) synchronization service. The Funambol services will tie into Open-Xchange for collaboration, which 1&1 already uses.
Why Funambol? Great functionality/feature set, open source (source code matters to 1&1), and low cost. Put another way, Funambol offers 1&1 a solution that it can tweak to meet its customer requirements, thereby differentiating its services while still saving money.
That's the power of open source. And it's just one more proof point that Funambol is set to disrupt the mobile market:
The 1&1 and Funambol push email service points to a trend in the industry - service providers such as 1&1 are choosing open source-based software to provide mobile services. Earlier this year, Funambol announced an agreement with EarthLink and anticipates more will follow. These moves are expected to generate a wide range of new low-cost mobile email and related services for the mass market. Funambol has been leading the evolution of this market with its mobile open source software since 2001. The new 1&1 mobility service is expected to launch within a few months.
It couldn't have happened to a better Italian. Fabrizio has been planting the seeds for this to happen for a long time. It's great to see him and the Funambol team reaping the harvest of their great work.