Dave writes on his blog an interesting point of view on why mobile device vendors should stick to the open standards. He’s on a blogging spree, so make sure to read the follow-ups on this item too:
This also highlights a serious issue with closed and non-standard platforms. If this were an ordinary smartphone, you could just shrug, ditch the in-built email client, and use something different. I’ve no idea whether, for instance, the email clients on the 770 and N800 are safe to use or not – but if I were using them, and I found it was insecure, I could switch to a different one. Security issue solved. I can switch to a different client because anyone can – in principle – write one, because the platform is open (allowing them to write programs for the platform) and the standards are open (allowing them to write an email client).
With Apple’s choice to use a proprietary system with Yahoo, the option to be secure has been denied to their users.
Had Apple and Yahoo chosen to use the existing, open-standard, Lemonade protocol suite, this simply couldn’t have happened.
ps. Tinymail and Modest of course use the standards, securely.