Motorola is to sell its mobile email subsidiary, Good Technology, two years after acquiring it for a reported $450 million. Terms this time are undisclosed but the value is likely to have dropped sharply. The move shows that the US firm is continuing to streamline its activities as it struggles to survive in handsets, but also a wider shift in the enterprise push email sector. All the giants were once vying to dominate that market with their own products, but are now more willing to work with existing players like RIM, within a broader applications strategy.
Good will be sold to Visto, a mobile email specialist whose platform is white labeled by operators such as Vodafone and T-Mobile, and which has a litigious history, having sued Microsoft (now settled), RIM, Seven Networks and even Good itself over patents.
‘Good’s robust enterprise and government solution will complement Visto’s strong operator presence in business and consumer markets,’ said Brian Bogosian, CEO of Visto, who presented the deal as a move to consolidate the mobile email communities outside Microsoft and RIM bases. The merged company will support customers in 100 countries, on 400 devices, he said. Visto’s core base lies with cellcos, especially in EMEA and north America, while Good has about 500 enterprise and public sector clients, mainly in the US, and sells its products through AT&T, Verizon and Sprint Nextel.
At one time, email was the main application driving investment in mobile enterprise strategies, and the handset vendors wanted to control that app at the server as well as on the client, leading to a string of acquisitions such as Motorola’s of Good in November 2006, and Nokia’s of Intellisync a year earlier. However, the world has changed ‘ the big names have successfully launched email-driven Qwerty devices like Nokia’s E75, though arguably they have not yet beaten RIM’s BlackBerry in this field; enterprises are looking to broader wireless strategies and the mobile specialists realize they need to address these with partnerships, with Microsoft, IBM and RIM itself; and the biggest email opportunity has moved to the web, with Nokia focusing its efforts on open internet-based mail targeted at consumers and new user bases.
Motorola originally acquired Good for the GoodLink push email software, and GoodAccess connectivity suite, in order to support its push into email devices such as Q and try to grab RIM’s heartland. Good also brought with it a range of software licensing deals with device makers, including Dell and Motorola’s own corporate WLan unit Symbol. However, it failed to dislodge RIM from its position, and most successful challenges were Microsoft-based in the enterprise, while original plans to focus the Good technology on consumers, where the market was more wide open, were frustrated, leading Motorola to integrate Good with Symbol and its enterprise unit instead.
“Good was either going to fade away or be given to someone,” said Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner, in an interview with Total Telecom.”They get rid of a failed business, take some employees off the books and end a lawsuit.”