Andrey Golub

Received via e-mail from J. Gerry Purdy, VP & Chief Analyst of Frost & Sullivan.

 

 

Take a Peek at Your Wireless Email:

Why There’s Still Room for a New Solution Provider

 

On Sept. 14, a startup company in New York – Peek – will launch a new wireless email device and service nationwide with Target. Your first reaction might be: “Good grief, with the BlackBerry and iPhone out there, why in the world would someone want to introduce still yet another mobile device into the market?” As you’ll soon find out, there is plenty of room still left in the market for a new player, and Peek is filling a major hole in the market that has not been previously addressed.

Peek is initially focusing on the US market where there are approximately 264 million cell phone subscribers (according to Frost & Sullivan). But there are only roughly 15 million (US) and 32 million internationally that are actively using their cell phone to manage email while on the go. It’s safe to say that the remaining wireless subscribers are likely doing email on their PC or Mac, but simply are not reading and managing their email on their phones.

The wireless operators – in partnership with companies like SEVEN and Visto – have introduced wireless email services for the consumer or small business, along with RIM with their BlackBerry Internet Service offering. These programs do work and can help people using feature phones and low end SmartPhones to manage email, but there are some inherent problems using standard cell phones to process email instead of making calls, as they were primarily designed to do.

Part of the problem of using a feature phone for email is that it’s difficult use a 10-key numeric keypad on many standard phones. Sure, you can ‘triple type’ but it’s time consuming and stressful. Another reason is that most cell phones have a small portrait style display and email is best reviewed on a horizontal landscape style display. Finally, it can be very expensive to process emails on your phone, depending on the data plan that you have. No one wants to begin doing email on their phone and then get a bill for $200.

I have been a big proponent of someone developing a low cost solution for consumers that would match what BlackBerry is currently doing for the enterprise and professional worker. The market opportunity is huge and seems ripe for the taking. Apple’s iPhone is nice, but it only runs on the AT&T Wireless network and it is expensive, with cost of the device at $199 (minimum) and upwards of $30 to $50 per month for data.

Peek is positioned to ‘fill the huge market gap’ of unmet user requirements: 1) low cost, 2) wide color display with high contrast fonts, 3) an easy-to-use QWERTY keyboard, 4) easy to set up access to popular email portals, 5) well-designed software that gives a good user experience, and 6) easy to buy. All of these objectives have been met with the introduction of Peek. The company is located in New York City and has a development and marketing office in Oakland, CA.

Peek has a nationwide distribution agreement via Target and will likely expand through other distribution, such as Best Buy and Circuit City and discount warehouses like Costco, in the next couple of years. Peek costs $100 and the monthly service is $20/month for an ‘all you can eat’ service that runs on the older (and less costly) GPRS.

Here’s what Peek looks like: It is thin & holds a charge for days. It has a blinking blue envelope icon on the upper left side of the display (see photo) to let you know when new mail has arrived. There’s a nice scroll wheel on the right side to make it easy to scroll through incoming messages, although some left handed people will find it difficult to use. One surprise: when you turn on the unit, the keys have a back light and glow in blue so you can easily see the keys to type even when in dark rooms or on an airplane.

• To get started, you just give Peek the username and password for most popular online email systems such as Yahoo, AOL and Gmail. Peek’s servers know how to set up a link to these sites.

• Like BlackBerry, they have implemented using ‘T’ to go to the top of the Inbox message queue.

• If you want to open the message without going through a menu, you simply hit ‘Enter.’

• The screen layout is clean and fonts are sharp, and there’s high contrast between the characters and the background on the display.

• To help load up Peek with your contacts, Peek provides a Contact download service from Yahoo, Gmail, AOL and Hotmail. It’s not a synch service, but it does allow users of popular online email services to quickly load up the device with their contact information.

It works using GPRS – remember that? Since they are not downloading HTML (for now) nor are they downloading attachments, GPRS works just fine for the small character-based emails that Peek is managing.

Here are some of the things that I think the Peek management will have to address in order to grow into a large, successful company:

• Integrate the user’s Contact and Calendar information. They definitely need to support an automatic two-way sync with Outlook and with popular online services.

• Need to develop a main menu that will allow multiple applications to be launched. This implies that they should publish an API for the system and allow developers to add applications much like Apple has done with the AppStore for the iPhone.

• Create a high end unit that integrates GPS and Wi-Fi

• Add HTML formatting. One way to do this to keep costs low would be to transfer these emails during the night when traffic is low.

• Add a scroll ball in center like BlackBerry to support both right and left handed people.

• Improve the quality of the glass cover, as the pre-production unit I had had many scratches after a few days. (Note: Peek told me they plan to ship with a black case made of recycled PET material made by Timbuk2).

I have been using my pre-production unit for a few days. It works well. I think a lot of people who have a traditional cell phone but would like to manage their email while traveling or away from home using a low cost solution will find this better than trying to process email with a traditional phone or paying a higher price for a SmartPhone and data services.

In order to become really successful, the company will need to expand internationally and create a set of APIs so that third parties can build additional applications.

It was refreshing to see a new product come to market from a startup that works well and looks to have a bright future.

Written by:

J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D.
VP & Chief Analyst
Mobile & Wireless
Frost & Sullivan

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