Did Microsoft Buy Acompli To Disrupt Email?

Email was once a cutting-edge technology that allowed individuals to communicate quickly in a new and exciting way. Now, much like the conventional mail it partially replaced, email has become a boring necessity that consumers take for granted.

Could Microsoft Corporation MSFT change that?

This week the Windows-maker announced that it acquired Acompli, a provider of mobile email apps for iOS and Android.

"In a world where more than half of email messages are first read on a mobile device, it's essential to give people fantastic email experiences wherever they go," Rajesh Jha, Corporate Vice President for Outlook and Office 365, wrote in a post on Microsoft's blog. "The Acompli team is passionate about this quest."

Acompli does not currently support Windows Phone, but that didn't stop Microsoft from pursuing an acquisition. There could be a good reason for that.

"Email, by and large, hasn't changed much since Gmail," Sean Udall, CIO of Quantum Trading Strategies and author of The TechStrat Report, told Benzinga.

"When's the last time we really saw email had a root technology level change? We've basically gone ad decade without any good improvement to email technology. I think email could be greatly improved. I think searching could be better. Microsoft -- to the degree that this greatly enhances Outlook or Hotmail -- [the acquisition] could be a good deal."

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Udall still uses Hotmail, but it's not his primary email client. He thinks the whole email experience needs to be improved across all services. If a company succeeds, it could be very disruptive.

"Yahoo Mail needs a huge improvement," Udall added. "I think they've tried to improve it, but every time I look at it, I don't like it. The bottom line is, I think this could be a space that would see a lot of tech innovation. Some innovation isn't really innovation as in creating a new thing -- it's taking an existing process and making it radically better."

'Reinventing Itself'

Tech industry expert and analyst Jeff Kagan said that this acquisition comes at a time when Microsoft is "in the process of reinventing itself."

"Who Microsoft will be going forward looks much different than who they have been over the past several decades," said Kagan. "They haven't been challenged. They have a big opportunity, they have lots of customers -- but it's not a forgone conclusion. They have to come up with ideas within the market. This should help them, but this is just one of many."

Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report.