Windows Phone Thoughts: Modern Nomads: "The (non)sense of push communication"

"Push e-mail seems to have become the holy grail of mobile computing. In the US, Blackberry is a huge success, and now other players in the mobile arena see it as the feature to have as well. Regardless if we want it, new devices will be equiped with push e-mail. But is it desirable to have push e-mail in the first place? And what is the business value of push e-mail? In this article we try to address these questions."

Jaap van Ekris makes an interesting post on his new site, Modern Nomads. He decries the recent obsession in the Windows Mobile and other communities about the notion of push email, and argues it's not really necessary in most instances. I agree that some users don't really need it, and carry the Blackberry either as an addiction or a status symbol. However, I don't agree with all of his points, and I find push email to be an invaluable tool for me. Here's my interpretation of his points, and a brief rebuttal for each. What do you think?

• Push email was developed instead of SMS. Jaap correctly notes that Blackberries are far more popular in the US, and hypothesizes it was developed as an alternative to SMS, as US SMS capability was limited to single-carrier messaging for years. While this is true to some extent, I don't agree that this is the main reasoning for Blackberry's success. SMS is a relatively limited chat mechanism; Blackberries support a more generalized email infrastructure, and early Blackberry adopters were predominantly business -- it was too expensive for consumers -- whereas SMS was clearly targeted to a consumer audience first and foremost. Early Blackberry adoption in North America comes from the fact that RIM is a North American company, and first adopted technologies like Mobitex, which were broadly deployed in North America at the time.
  
  
• Push email is based on a flawed mechanism -- email -- and is bandwidth-hungry to boot. Jaap points out that email is frequently lost in spam, delayed due to server issues, etc. While this can be true, I think it's not germane to the push discussion -- what push provides is a desktop-like latency to email on the handheld device, nothing more, nothing less. I've got effective spam filtering, and Microsoft even offers spam filtering for free in Exchange 2003. I also find email surprisingly reliable, much more so than his argument suggests. His discussion about bandwidth use is certainly true, but I believe it'll be a moot point as more and more carriers around the world adopt unlimited bandwidth. All of the US carriers offer it now, and European carriers are starting to offer it as well.
  
  
• Push email creates a must-reply culture. The article mentions that as a result of push, you've got tons of email, both urgent and non-urgent, pushed to your device -- and people expect immediate replies if they know you're being pushed. To me, this depends on the setup and the corporate culture in which it's being deployed. I use a ton of filters to make sure only 30-40 messages get pushed to my 700w each day, and 99% of them are read-only; I have the option to reply, and do not suggest that I have the obligation to reply. This eliminates a lot of the stress implied by Jaap. I do accept that this is not true for everyone, and for those who are stuck in a situation where they must reply to their Blackberry, that sucks. :| On the other hand, give me push email any day over the old culture of constantly calling someone. At least with email, I don't have to answer the call or check my voicemail to see what the topic of discussion is about! I find voice calling to be a much more stressful interruption of my daily flow. Voice calling is also less useful when more than two parties are involved.
  
  
• Push email is useless for business -- but push appointments are useful. Jaap notes that Exchange supports the pushing of updated contacts, calendar, tasks, and email; he thinks the former are far more useful, especially the calendar updates. Me, I love all of them. The main reason for push for me is not the immediate reading and answering of email -- it's the ability to, at a glance at any point during the day, get an up-to-date snapshot of goings-on. For example, if I'm at lunch and am waiting for a response from an important contact, I can momentarily glance at my Treo and decide whether I should cut short my lunch or continue at a leisurely pace. To me, that is enhancing my lifestyle, not making it worse. Manually polling was a far worse solution.

My conclusion? Jaap's points are not without merit -- but to me, push email is a tool; it depends on how you use it. Like any new technology, there is the opportunity for abuse, but I also strongly believe there is the opportunity for great benefit. It's more than belief, in fact; I benefit via push's availability every day.