* LEMONADE standard focused on making mobile comms cheaper
The License to Enhanced Mobile Oriented and Diverse Endpoints (LEMONADE) Profile is a collection of open standards focused on making mobile communications cheaper and more efficient by making better use of bandwidth, among other benefits. The LEMONADE Profile (RFC 4550), which was approved on June 23, extends existing Internet messaging standards to make mobile messaging more efficient compared to using just SMTP and IMAP. A variety of existing IMAP and SMTP RFCs are included in the LEMONADE Profile.
LEMONADE makes specifying and acquiring mobile messaging systems easier for vendors and customers alike by establishing a single specification for mobile messaging systems rather than having to specify a variety of standards. For end users of LEMONADE-compliant devices, the primary benefit that the specification offers is better performance because devices that are built to it make more efficient use of bandwidth, such as allowing messages to be forwarded without being downloaded to the device.
LEMONADE is particularly important as a means of reducing the costs of mobile messaging, since more efficient use of bandwidth can translate to significantly lower costs. This can also extend the life of older mobile messaging devices that have less processing power than newer devices. LEMONADE also provides push e-mail capabilities and provides faster resynchronization than is possible using IMAP. A future enhancement to LEMONADE will include media streaming, although the working group has not yet expressed much interest in instant messaging.
The LEMONADE Profile is supported by a variety of companies, including Isode, Cingular, Qualcomm, Sony/Ericsson, Sun, Sprint, Nokia, Oracle, Lucent and Nortel, among others. We should see LEMONADE-compliant e-mail clients during the fourth quarter of this year.
