BusinessWeek reports that 1&1 will soon start deploying Open-Xchange mailboxes in Germany, followed by rollouts in the US, Britain and France. The article reports that 1&1 manages 5 million email accounts on behalf of 2.7 million web hosting customers. (This is wildly inconsistent with the 6 million hosting customers and 65 million emails accounts in 1&1's Business 2.0 ad. Maybe these figures include users from 1&1 parent company United Internet's Web.de and GMX portals business?)

With Open-Xchange's open source solution, 1&1 will be able to offer Microsoft Exchange-like features for $5 per user per month, versus its $10-$15 $6.99 current price. BusinessWeek says this is "nothing but bad news" for Microsoft, but are Microsoft and Open-Xchange competing with each other? Or should both be worried that end users like Steve Rubel are turning Gmail into their personal nerve centers?

Steve is a senior VP at Edelman PR, an enormous organization that no doubt has an industrial strength email system, but Steve is hooked on Gmail because:

"Everyday I come across something on the web that I want to save for future reference... since I travel a lot, I need to access my bits from a mobile device. The latest version of the Google Toolbar has a send to Gmail function. Select some text or graphics, right click on it and send it to Gmail... Whammo - an instant personal database."

A friend who works at Microsoft says he can use his Windows Mobile phone to search his Exchange archive as well. But 10 GB Gmail accounts are available for $4.17 each per month (mobile client, website builder and web-based word processor and spreadsheet included). That's a 10x larger personal database compared with 1&1's 1GB allocation (Outlook 2003 and free domain name included).

Another important question is, to what extent will 1&1 be able to drive Open-Xchange adoption? Yes, as the world's largest hosting provider, 1&1 can deliver an enormous audience. But seeing is *not* deploying. As a point of reference, when I switched from (POP mail + Outlook + Blackberry) to (Google Apps + Gmail mobile) last week, I realized that despite the conveniently-located Google Start Page icon on my control panel, I still like Netvibes better. But thanks to the Gmail and Google Calendar widgets on Netvibes, I was able to piece together a best of all worlds solution.

If I were 1&1 CEO Andreas Gauger, I would think along the same lines and open up my community and technology platform. Customer A might prefer Gmail + 1&1's website builder, while Customer B might choose Open-Xchange mail + Google Pages. Why not use widgets, RSS and open APIs to help each user concoct his perfect combination?

So Apple announced the new iPhone yesterday. I got this photo from Engadget; it's one of dozen's they've got.

What does the iPhone have to do with web hosting? Nothing, I thought. Until I read Raju Vegesna's comments: the iPhone runs OSX and Safari. It's got built-in WiFi. Its owners are going to "regularly and practically" use web apps. Raju says this makes Safari support a priority for Zoho.

It matters to you, too. And your customers. Liam built a .mobi site a few weeks ago. It's easily viewable on my Blackberry Pearl - but by this June, there might be a lot more web browsing on the iPhone versus the Pearl.

Via Google Blogoscoped: "Welcome to your new Dell PC - in partnership with Google". Dell machines now come with Google Desktop and Google Toolbar preinstalled. My first reaction was, watch this space for Google Domains, Google Apps and Google Docs. Jason Calacanis has much grander ideas:

"I predict that in 2007 Google will release an Operating System and a super discount PC. Think, a $300-400 PC that's sold at cost in order to make money off of their services. Think about being Dell or Gateway and being offered a free OS and 1-5% of the revenue from Adsense on the computer? How can you turn that down when it's going to be double or triple your margin on a PC?!"

Microsoft, by the way, is bundling Office Live with Sony and Toshiba computers. When the news came out last month, Paul Engels from Hostopia questioned the effectiveness of preinstalled bloatware. But if the bloatware were subsidizing your PC, might that change the picture?

PS - In addition to GoogleOS and GooglePC, GigaOm say Google Mobile Phone might be on its way as well.

Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo says there will be 4 billion mobile phone subscriptions by 2011. He says mobile content - ranging from music downloads to video to satellite navigation services - will drive rapid growth.

Oliver Starr from MobileCrunch is looking forward to a future of "4.5g phones with 100 GB hard drives, 10 megapixel cameras, GigE connectivity, and near field technology that connects to any PC".

The future is on its way: Cingular announced its MySpace partnership today. For $2.99/month, customers will be able to view/edit MySpace content via their handsets. Verizon Wireless recently signed a deal to offer YouTube content via its $15/month VCast service. GMail went mobile a few weeks ago. Sprint Nextel plans to include the Java app on some of its handsets.

But the market's still wide open. (Even if mobile net neutrality has already become an issue.) HipMojo says the worldwide mobile content market will grow from $16.7 billion today to to $78 billion as early as next year. (Ok, I'm not sure I believe this particular figure.) By 2011, CNet says cellphone porn alone will be worth $3.3 billion (up from $1.4 billion in 2006), GigaOm reports that mobile social networks will grow from 50 million members to 174 million, and Informa's market research shows that mobile advertising will be a $11.35 billion business (versus $871 million today).

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz recently pointed out that a majority of tomorrow's Internet users will access the web through mobile handsets rather than PCs. So isn't it every web hosting provider's responsibility to help its customers reach this audience by becoming intimately familiar with the fine points of mobile-enabling traditional websites?

PS - Oh yeah, hosting providers should make their own sites mobile accessible, too. It looks like SoftLayer's new mini-portal went over really well.

PPS - Just remembered that Caspio's app builder let's you create mobile forms. I've been meaning to check that out.