Mobile email provider Synchronica has won a second contract in Africa. The first win was announced at the end of July – and both are terribly mysterious. While Synchronica is happy naming time-frames and prices, no information on which African mobile operators it is dealing with has yet emerged.
What does Synchronica do?
Synchronica provides mobile email for extremely low-end devices. Not only that, it’s push email. The entire system works around SMS. If I send an email to your phone through Synchronica, you receive a preview SMS with the first 140 characters of the email in it. Based on that preview, you decide whether you want the rest of the mail or not. If you accept it, you’ll receive the entire thing broken down into SMS-sized chunks.
What’s the African deal?
The first deployment must have had made an impression. The deal back in July was a $165,000 license for 20,000 users. This deal is worth almost 250,000 dollars, for 70,000 users. Synchronica puts a lot of the credit with its African network equipment provider, as both of the orders have been received through this partner.
From the release:
Carsten Brinkschulte, CEO of Synchronica: “This deal once again validates our strategy of using major network equipment providers to scale our business on a global basis and reach as many countries and operators as possible. Our award-winning Mobile Gateway product is increasingly recognised by operators as an invaluable tool to attract new customers, drive additional revenues and reduce customer churn. Because our product works across the entire range of handsets, operators can introduce data services to the mass-market and is particularly attractive in fast-growing emerging markets like Africa.”
What we think?
I’m kind of a fan of Synchronica. I feel that the service it provides is an imaginative application of very basic mobile technology to a more advanced form of communication. And while it’s never going to catch on in Europe (our mobile telecoms have simply moved on too far) it’s good to see cheap, reliable mobile teach being built in at the operator end.
It is hard to agree that this idea is cheaper than a user reading their email, pushed to them, by technologies that can be handled by even the most basic mobile devices built today, like MfE. I get it that not all Africans will have access to the shiniest new smartphones, but if you care enough to get your email delivered to your phone, then I doubt you’d use a phone manufactured in 1989!