SAN FRANCISCO—Seven, long known for its e-mail solutions, is trying to make it easier for consumers to move between their business e-mail, personal e-mail, contacts, calendar, voice mail, SMS and MMS on the handset. On the heels of that news, the company announced it will provide a set of integrated messaging components for Qualcomm’s BREW Mobile Platform.
It’s been part of the company’s vision all along to extend its expertise to include other forms of messaging besides e-mail, according to Seven Chief Technology Officer Trevor Fiatal.
Nowadays, separate mobile applications are required to handle each type of message, including text, voice mail and e-mail, and it’s difficult to get end-users accustomed to jumping back and forth, according to Seven. With its new integrated platform, Seven wants to take out the guesswork and make it easy to move back and forth and connect in intuitive ways. Rather than moving between channels, messages can be arranged based on relationships. For example, all the voice mail and text messages from one person can be stored in the same area.
The company had wanted to pursue the solution for some time but the environment wasn’t there. Things have moved rapidly in the last couple of years so that the handset environment is more conducive to it, according to Fiatal. Handset makers also are realizing that they can’t necessarily go with their own in-house solutions in today’s hyper-competitive world.
The company held focus groups to see how people use and view the icons on their phones and developed its solution in part based on that. Especially with the young teen crowd, the company wanted to make sure the solution would work when end-users are juggling several conversations at the same time. The solution is designed such that end-users can juggle those tasks and move around the phone without having to worry that a message goes to the wrong recipient.
The application can be downloaded but the more likely scenario is it will be embedded on devices. The Seven solution for BREW will feature threaded text and multimedia messaging, calendar and contacts synchronization and instant messaging. The solution will be available to mobile device manufacturers and wireless operators as a pre-integrated solution.
Filed Under: Carriers
