Google Sync Improved for Corporate iPhone, iPad Users

Apple iOS users are in luck. Google Sync now lets iPhone and iPad users search Gmail, send email from any address they want, and accept, decline or edit calendar events.

Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) June 15 added new features to its Google Sync application geared toward improving the work experiences for corporate iPhone and iPad users.

Google released Google Sync in February 2009 to let users synchronize their Gmail Contacts and Google Calendar with their iPhone, Windows Mobile and Nokia S60 devices. The tool leverages the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol for synchronicity across apps.

The search engine later added push mail support for iPhone, iPod Touch and Windows Mobile-based smartphones to Sync.

Now Google is letting iPhone and iPad users with Gmail and Google Apps e-mail accounts search all of their e-mails in Gmail, instead of just those stored locally by the iOS email application.

iPhone and iPad users may also now send email from any address they want, a boon for users who manage multiple email aliases from one Gmail account. Google essentially applied its "Send Mail as" Gmail feature to the iOS mail app.

Finally, users may also now accept, decline or edit calendar events from the iOS calendar app.

The majority of the 100 million iPhones and more than 25 million iPads activated worldwide are used in the consumer sector. However, Apple is seeing a growing number of enterprise workers using its iOS devices thanks to their ease-of-use and steadily improving security features.

Google, whose own Android handsets are seeing enterprise adoption, recognizes this, which is why it had improved the user experience for traveling workers who like to access their Gmail from their favorite iOS device.

Good Technology said in January that iOS devices represented more than 65 percent of net new activations from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31, 2010, while the iPad's share of overall net activations grew from 14 percent to 22 percent over the quarter.

Android devices stayed steady at around 30 percent of all net new activations over the period, but represented more than 40 percent of all smartphone (non-tablet) activations.