Seven to offer new mail services with Telefonica

BARCELONA (Reuters) - E-mail software company Seven will offer new services to Telefonica customers starting later this year that will allow company employees to access their corporate mail on any handset they choose.

Privately owned Seven, which provides BlackBerry-type email services to consumers, said at the Mobile World Congress wireless fair on Monday it would launch its 7.0 version for Telefonica customers in Spain and Latin America.

The latest version allows individuals to have their corporate e-mail pushed to their own mobile phone without an IT manager having to install Seven software behind the company's firewall, if that corporate mail is accessible via the Web.

It uses the same access point as employees use when retrieving mail via the Internet to reach the mail server. Some companies may ban such a practice.

"It's still addressing the corporate market but it's addressing it at the individual level," Andrew Szelke, who runs Seven's relationships with partners, told Reuters.

Seven can push e-mail without customers having to call it up to most phones with the major exceptions of Research in Motion's Blackberry series and Apple's iPhone.

Research in Motion is seeking to broaden its reach beyond corporations into the retail market. Wireless giant Vodafone said on Monday it was adding the BlackBerry system to its lineup as a preferred platform for consumers.

California-based Seven has deals with more than 100 mobile operators and Internet service providers including AT&T, Globe Telecom and Hutchison Telecommunications.

(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan)