Bill Burnham writes:
A grand total of over $516M invested in just three software companies [Visto, Good and Seven] all of whom are focused on the same niche of providing middleware software that enables mobile devices to use e-mail. Whats more, the amount of capital invested in the space has increased by over 100% in little over a year. Good lord.
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Now $500M wouldnt be a big deal if these companies were pursuing a long term market worth billions of dollars but theres a decent chance that this market wont even exist in 5 years. Thats because wireless e-mail middleware has now gotten the full attention of a little company up in Redmond Washington called Microsoft. Microsoft just happens to be the largest provider of enterprise e-mail software in the world. As it turns out, much of the value-added provided by these wireless e-mail middleware companies has been simply to make Microsofts Exchange servers accessible from a mobile device.
