Sproqit socks it to BlackBerry

US firm Sproqit is making a move into the mobile email market dominated by BlackBerry with software that allows Palm and Pocket PC users to access to their emails on the move.

With the Sproqit Personal Edition software users can log on to Outlook remotely and access email, calendar and contacts.

Security cannot be compromised, the company claimed, because the PC being accessed keeps its security software settings with the handheld using the same port as a standard browser to connect and share information.

"This is the first time users can get direct, real-time secure access to their applications from a handheld device," said Sproqit chief executive Peter Mansour.

"We've added intelligence to a dumb client to make it just mildly stupid. The result is that you can download on demand, onscreen, and get every single message."

Sproquit Personal Edition goes on sale on Wednesday, costing £8 per month. PalmOne will bundle the software into its Treo 600 handset from November.

A 25-person group version will also be released in November, while an enterprise edition for up to 10,000 users will be out in spring next year, Sproqit promised.

The company said that, unlike BlackBerry, which charges on a subscription model, its group and enterprise editions would be available for outright purchase.

It said that it could offer this pricing model because its software eliminates the need for dedicated datacentres through which information needs to be routed.

"The lack of a monthly payment would make this more attractive to corporates," said Rachel Lashford, analyst at Canalys.

"On the other hand a monthly fee does give good connection with the supplier and makes upgrading easier. Overall though, managing email via a handheld is the killer application for the mobile sphere and demand for solutions is very strong."

The software will also be available for Symbian and Microsoft Mobile operating systems by the end of this year, but Java will not be supported until 2005.