Gartner predicted last year that by 2008 wireless e-mail would become standard fare for all smartphones, existing right alongside voice communications. Today, Consilient introduced a solution it asserts would make that happen, not just for smartphones but for hundreds of different types of handsets—at a price far lower than today's mob-e-mail options.

With Consilient Push, the six year old Canadian company said it would greatly expand on its current 20,000 client base - mostly in the wireless CRM and ERP market - by moving squarely into the very same mobile e-mail territory held by Research In Motion, Good Technology, Seven, Visto, Intellisync (now a part of Nokia) and new entrants and 800-pound gorillas Microsoft and, yes, Nokia, among others.

Consilient says there’s plenty of room for new blood such as itself. While push e-mail accounts for about 10 million users - mostly early adopters and enterprise customers - there's over 2 billion mobile phones in the world —a small drop in the bucket indeed.

"We're responding to market demand with Consilient Push. Carriers and device manufacturers recognize the high cost of solutions like BlackBerry and want something that's affordable for the mass market," Consilient CEO Tevor Adey tells PDAStreet.

The company argues it has the answer as to why mobile e-mail hasn't reached its full potential, even though so much money has been invested.

Adey says, "We've learned a lot about why there are only 10 million subscribers in the push e-mail space. We know the recipe to open it up to the hundreds of millions."

"Up until now the only people that could afford to stay connected with e-mail were business executives. We designed Consilient Push with the price sensitive consumer in mind. Because it literally costs only dollars a month Consilient Push is finally making mobile e-mail affordable for everyone," he adds.

The services offered by competitors - including RIM - are all based on proprietary technology and they cost a lot more per user to roll out. While others sometimes support a wide variety of hansets, Consilient Push does so using open standards on the back end and on the client device; at about ten times less per phone.

Consilient Push client software runs on RIM BlackBerry handhelds, Palm, Inc. Treos (as well as other Palm OS smartphones) and any of over 400 J2ME (Java 2 Mobile Edition) - often low cost - handsets.

Open Standards
In addition, Adey explains that his company "built Consilient Push using P-IMAP (Push-IMAP), which is a standard that was designed specifically for push e-mail. This technology allows us to offer a low-cost e-mail product that makes email affordable for everyone. "

Consilient Push is the first mob-e-mail solution based on the new P-IMAP open standard, an optimization of IMAP4 for mobile devices. P-IMAP is backed by the likes of Sony Ericsson, China Mobile, Samsung, Oracle and LG Electronics. Consilient engineers contributed to its development.

The company says the aim of P-IMAP is to free companies from expensive proprietary push e-mail plans, such as fellow countryman's RIM's BlackBerry offerings. Consilient Push also allows corporate and POP3 e-mail (such as Yahoo!, AOLMail, MSN Hotmail and Google's G Mail) to flow to supported handsets.

According to Consilient, open standards helps to lower the per-user cost to $3-$5 per month from today's typical push e-mail $40-$50 range. Adey thinks Consilient Push will "become a tick box item when you sign up for your mobile phone, as operators would much rather go with a standards based approach than a propriety approach."

Distribution
Consilient Push e-mail's Java-based server is designed to support thousands of clients connecting via multiple wireless devices and phones, from the highest-end smartphone to low-end feature phones, simultaneously. It does not use a Network Operations Center - ala RIM - which means carriers can offer push email with no third-party fees.

While Consilient will sell its push e-mail product directly to enterprises, the main means of distribution will be through carriers, ISPs, and complimentary OEMs. They are about to announced several operator deals and have signed what they say is a very popular e-mail OEM.

"Consilient's primary focus is making e-mail accessible and affordable to the consumer market and enabling it on popular consumer phones. Consilient Push can be bought through wireless carriers as an add-on service like voicemail for a small fee, enabling everyone to access it from your corporate executive to a high school student," Adey asserts.

When a carrier or OEM offer Consilient Push, they'll do so under their own brand.