RIM Needs To Start Taking Gmail Seriously

Today North American customers of Research In Motion's BlackBerry Internet Services were granted access to a long-overdue feature: two-way email syncing with Gmail. This belated feature roll-out is just one example that spotlights why RIM needs to do a much better job of supporting Gmail.More and more companies rely on Gmail as their primary business email system. Two of the businesses I work for do, and I can name more than a handful of others that have switched from Microsoft's Exchange systems to Google's Gmail during the last few years. Google will be all too happy to tell you about its success stories.

Research In Motion's BIS-based email system (which is what is most-used by consumers) recently upgraded to version 3.0. There are tons of new features in the new server software. As a Gmail user, the most important new feature on this list is full Gmail syncing with read, unread, and sent messages. This means everything that users do with their messages online will be reflected on their BlackBerries and vice versa. (How this feature was absent for so many years is a mystery to me.)

Label support in Gmail is also a nice upgrade. I use labels to organize emails, and the lack of label support had been an annoyance from day one with BIS-based BlackBerries. Android phones handle Gmail labels perfectly (as you'd expect), though the iPhone and other platforms don't. BIS 3.0 now does, and that should make many Gmail power users happ(ier).

Other notable upgrades include better attachment support (including Windows Media Audio files), email address recovery, additional language support, and xHTML support.

But there are still Gmail features absent from BIS 3.0. There is still no support for creating/accessing filters, or sorting out starred emails. And don't get me started on Gmail's most important feature, threaded emails.

Threaded email alone is responsible for making Gmail the killer email application that it is. It gives users a whole new level of visibility and utility in dealing with their emails and inboxes. Google's Android platform supports threaded email in the inbox. The iPhone will -- once iPhone OS 4.0 arrives -- also be able to support threaded email.

Threaded email is only supported on BlackBerries via a kludgy plug-in. It shows messages grouped together, but not in the full, threaded capacity that Gmail users are used to. The Java-based Gmail app that Google wrote for the BlackBerry platform amazingly support threaded email, though the client itself isn't all that feature rich. (Also, using a third-party email application on a BlackBerry seems to be the most ridiculous concept possible.)

Given the growing number of businesses that are switching to Gmail for their primary email needs, RIM -- the supposed mobile email king -- needs to do better to support these more advanced Gmail features. The competition isn't going to allow RIM to get away with stunted Gmail support for long.