Yahoo buys Zimbra, what does this mean for mobile?
By Stefan Constantinescu on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 3:11 PM PST In Nokia
If the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Phone is as competent as I think it is going to be than it will include a mobile office suite that is compatible with their Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentation, Mail and Calender applications. The consumer experience Google will be able to push with this is “forget where your data is, just work with it wherever you are on whatever device you want.” I can not wait for that day to come, this concept of syncing is dead to me and a lot of other people. Yahoo just purchased Zimbra, that suite does a fantastic job on the desktop and in the browser, but will Yahoo port that experience over to mobile devices?
More importantly, when will Nokia (NYSE: NOK) get off their ass and buy Zoho already? They are the only other player doing remotely interesting work in this field of online enabled office work.
Why do I think Nokia is competing with companies like Google, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and Yahoo? Just look at where the giant Finnish ship is being steered, they want to get money from consumers post purchase of their devices. To do that they are investing in services and software aka the internet and just today with their acquisition of Enpocket they are telling the world that they want to become the default platform for ads on mobile devices.
What happens when documents are no longer files, but hyperlinks on the internet? You want to send your boss some figures, just shoot him a text message with a link. Nokia doesn’t get the internet yet and it certainly isn’t a field where decisions are made by committee. You launch, you hope to dear god it becomes popular, if not you learn from your folly’s and try again. This cycle doesn’t take months either, it happens in weeks and for some online companies it becomes a daily struggle to improve their service.
Remember, Ovi right now is about music, games and maps. What happens when they start offering services that help you be productive?
Actually, by acquiring Zimbra, Yahoo! got its phone play, too. iZimbra is scheduled for release in Q4, which enables iPhones to access the full Zimbra feature set, Zimbra mobile already enables Windows Mobile and Palm devices to sync over-the-air, and the rumor has it that Zimbra’s working on BES integration, although it already works using Notify’s software (soon to be upgraded, too).
From the same basic team, two articles on this:
Google Apps vs. Zimbra Hosting: http://faqs.01.com/#33
On the impact of the acquisition: http://blog.01.com/?p=325
Interesting.. it MAY be that Google Docs and others will become available not only on their own phones? Nokia may be aiming for that? Building their own office apps may not be what they want/need and what would be best for the consumer. Just imagine Word not being the standard (read monopoly) anymore.. scary.