America's OmniSky, which delivers email and web information to pocket computers, is gunning for the UK market. In a "public beta test", the first users are being offered three months' unlimited use of the system plus a Handspring VisorPhone or equivalent for £299.
"We think we're in the right position for the market to take off," says Neville Street, chief executive of OmniSky International, a joint venture between OmniSky Inc and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. "It's the sort of thing everybody's been crying out for."
OmniSky lets you send and receive email from up to six standard POP3 mailboxes, and is not limited to a proprietary service such as Palm.net. Users can access almost any website, not just ones that have installed Palm Query Application (PQA) software to handle requests from devices running the Palm OS operating system.
OmniSky has signed deals with more than 30 content providers to provide material for its service. These include Google, Scoot, Sports.com, Onlineweather.com, Maporama, the Wall Street Journal Europe, the Financial Times and Guardian Unlimited.
But this is no "walled garden". Users can call up any website, with the pages being reformatted on the fly by OmniSky's servers. This is similar to AvantGo's "clipping" service, but Street says it is an interactive system rather than one where users download material and read it later.
Although some of OmniSky's senior staff used to work for Palm - Street ran Palm's international operations - the service will not be limited to Palm users. In the US, OmniSky upports Palm, Handspring, and PocketPC devices such as the HP Jornada 540 series. Street says: "We want to support the devices people really want to use."
This could include smart phones based on Microsoft's PocketPC software such as the Sagem and Mondo Trium or Symbian's Epoc operating system, which is used in Psion handhelds. OmniSky plans to show a Symbian device at next month's CeBIT computer trade show in Germany. "We'll see what the response is before we commit to supporting the product," says Street.
However, getting into the European market ahead of the Palm VII (the wireless device Palm sells in the US) has led to some sacrifices. In particular, OmniSky was supposed to be based on a faster always-on system called GPRS (General Packet Radio Service).
"Clearly, GPRS is the endgame for our service," says Street. "But because GPRS has been slipping, we decided to get into the market early with a service based on GSM" [Group System for Mobiles]. In other words, a standard cellular network: BT Cellnet. This also means users have to dial the network. But Street shows that this can be done by pushing one button, and the connection takes about 10 seconds. It's slower when the network is busy, but still much faster than a Wap (Wireless application protocol) phone.
The results also look much better than you get with a Wap phone, because handheld computer screens are much bigger and may be in colour. Put the two side by side and there is no contest.
Unfortunately, OmniSky users will not be able to leave their mobile phones behind. "For the beta test, we are not going to enable the voice channel," says Street. "We'll do that later." The aim is to avoid complications, including the problems of charging for services. However, Street thinks people will have the option to pay a flat rate for a data connection to OmniSky and buy airtime separately. "We'll partner with different airtime providers," he says.
In some ways it is disappointing to see the UK service offering less than the US, but in both cases, there is more to come. In the US, for example, OmniSky also has a deal with America Online to deliver AOL's proprietary email and content in AOL format: "It's aimed at a more consumer market," he says.
In the future, there are plans to extend the instant messaging system, which only connects people to other OmniSky users, though SMS will still be available via the phone part of the service. The next version of OmniSky will also be able to read Wap sites, and in the longer term, there will be location-based services. Users will be able to find the nearest restaurant, for example, download a map showing where it is, and phone to make a reservation. Late last year, OmniSky bought NomadIQ to develop location-based offerings.
But these are extras. Street reckons OmniSky's "killer applications" are email and messaging. The core target market is therefore made up of business professionals who already use handheld computers and need a simple way to check their email from the back of a cab. "If we can get a couple of percent of those to move to wireless, I think we'll be pretty pleased," he says.
