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Palm, Microsoft - but no PalmSource in this relationship, and no RIM either

Associated Press reports that when the Treo 650 launches at the CTIA show it will have a Blackberry-like corporate mail solution built in. Confusing, if Sproqit has a remote control Outlook built into the same phone? Well, maybe ... maybe not.

The AP report says that PalmOne has done a deal with Redmond, allowing the "next generation of Treo smartphones" - shorthand for the Treo 650, which PalmOne says it can't talk about - "to work directly with Microsoft's Exchange e-mail program."

Although the report calls the relationship "unprecedented" it isn't really. The deal in fact has an obverse in the deal between RIM and PalmSource.

Rim's Blackberry is most popular with corporate users, and is based on having a RIM email server behind the corporate firewall. The deal with PalmSource gives Palm licensees access to that technology.

This matching deal with Microsoft gives PalmOne the technology to go to people who already have a mail server, and don't want a Rim server.

The newswire report says it is "designed to eliminate the need for third-party applications and servers that PalmOne's Treo customers previously used to access Microsoft's popular e-mail servers."

If that were the whole story, then there would be no bundle of such a third-party application as Sproqit

The move looks forward to the increasingly widespread availability of 3G. If these deals become universal, there's absolutely no way Europe's GPRS network can carry that much data, says research company Ovum. Analyst Jessica Figueras told NewsWireless: "It may work in the US and North America, where GPRS data is still undersubscribed, but in Europe, it's a capacity problem, not a solution problem."