Mobile push email goes open source

And gets cosy with Microsoft...

Following in the footsteps of the likes of Nokia and Vodafone, a US company is breaking new ground with push email, claiming the first open source offering of its kind.

Funambol, the company behind the open source client and server product, has already seen 250,000 downloads of the enterprise software, which can support any WAP device, as well as BlackBerrys and handsets based on the Windows Mobile operating system.

The Funambol service is distributed free under the open source GPL (General Public Licence) although users can also buy support and a more feature-rich offering from the company.

According to analysts, mobile email usage is well and truly entrenched in the upper echelons of management. According to a recent report from Datamonitor, revenues from mobile email will triple to $600m by 2009.