Visto Pioneers Push Email on Smartphones With Ease-of-Use and Overall User Experience

LONDON, The Symbian Smartphone Show, Oct. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Visto today announced that the company has successfully completed the Symbian Email Validation Program and is the first company to be accredited the "Symbian Approved" mark for push email. The hallmark guarantees mobile professionals a high-quality mobile email experience, and will help accelerate a mass adoption of business-ready push email services on Symbian smartphones.

The Symbian Email Validation Program defines industry agreed quality guidelines for push email solutions in the form of a Symbian Recommended Practice against which vendors can validate their solutions. The guidelines cover the whole user experience from installation and device compatibility to minimum service functionality and ease-of-use.

Solutions that successfully complete the validation process are accredited with the "Symbian Approved" mark, signifying to phone manufacturers, system integrators and network operators that the solutions offer an industry agreed level of functionality. This benchmark is designed to shorten the time required to rollout push email services and accelerate the anticipated widespread adoption of push email on Symbian smartphones to enterprises and mobile workers.

The Visto Mobile platform, employed by operators around the world to deliver secure, easy-to-use email on the broadest range of business-ready handsets, is the first mobile email solution to achieve this accreditation.

"We are pleased to be the first vendor to receive the 'Symbian approved' accreditation for our mobile email offering. It helps demonstrates how Visto champions mobile push email by providing a secure email experience that is easy to use and able to run on a wide choice of smartphones," said Jean Tripier, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Visto. "Visto regards ease-of-use as the most important dimension in driving the mass market adoption of business mobile email. This is why we believe the Symbian mobile email validation programme is important."

"The rapid growth of availability of Symbian smartphones with push email capability represents a big market opportunity for everyone," said Jorgen Behrens, Executive Vice-President, Marketing, Symbian. "Visto and Symbian have worked closely to satisfy the Symbian Email Validation Programme criteria, enabling their customers to roll out mobile email more quickly. Symbian is pleased to recognise Visto for their efforts in being the first push email vendor to achieve this benchmark."

About Visto

Visto delivers the leading global platform for mobile operators to provide easy-to-use wireless push email to the broadest set of mobile devices. Visto's open solution enables email for the mass market, targeting enterprises, small businesses mobile professionals and consumers. The company's patented Visto Mobile(TM) platform with ConstantSync(TM) technology works in real time with POP3, IMAP, Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino email solutions for personal to business use, providing maximum control and flexibility for the operator and choice for the customer. Visto's customized, brandable solutions are available through mobile operators worldwide including Cingular, Elisa, Rogers Wireless, SmarTone, SFR, Softbank Mobile, Sprint Nextel, TELUS Mobility, Turkcell and the Vodafone Group.

Established in 1996 and headquartered in Redwood Shores, California, with offices in Seattle, Toronto, London, Milan, Paris, Madrid, Munich, Tokyo, Beijing and Tianjin, China, Visto is backed by Oak Investment Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Meritech Capital Partners, DFJ ePlanet Ventures, DFJ Growth Fund, Rustic Canyon Ventures, Allegis Capital, GKM and Blueprint Ventures. For more information, visit www.visto.com or email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

NOTE: Visto Corporation, Visto, the Visto logo, Visto Mobile, ConstantSync, Constant Synchronization and worklife.freedom are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Visto Corporation. All third-party trademarks, trade names, or service marks are the property of their respective owners and are used only to refer to the goods or services identified by those third-party marks. Visto's technology is protected by U.S. Patents 6,085,192; 5,968,131; 6,023,708; 5,961,590; 6,131,116; 6,151,606; 6,233,341; 6,131,096, 6,708,221 and 6,766,454 and the following NTP U.S. Patents: 5,436,960, 5,438,611, 5,479,472, 5,625,670, 5,631,946, 5,819,172, 6,067,451, 6,317,592 and various other foreign patents. Other patents pending.

About Symbian

Symbian is a software licensing company that develops and licenses Symbian OS, the market leading open operating system for advanced, data-enabled mobile phones, also known as smartphones.

Symbian licenses Symbian OS to the world's leading handset manufacturers and has built close co-operative business relationships with leading companies across the mobile industry. During H1 2006, 24 million Symbian OS phones were sold worldwide to over 250 major network operators, bringing the total number of Symbian OS phones shipped to 82.8 million.