Microsoft is scheduled to announce today partnerships with major cellular networks for a new generation of phones that would run Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system and be able to receive emails "pushed" directly from a company's PC server, without the need for a separate mobile server or additional license payments, reports the Associated Press. Microsoft is hoping that companies will go on to provide mobile email not only to top management but also to hosts of employees.

"At the end of the year, many will be asking themselves whether they really needed a Blackberry handset from RIM to check mail - and RIM might be asking themselves what went wrong," Strand Consult, a Denmark-based IT research house, wrote in a research note. "Microsoft will most probably overtake RIM as the leading mobile email provider."

Microsoft said that various carriers, including Amena, Chungwa Telecom, Cingular Wireless, Orange, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon and Vodafone, would offer free upgrades for customers, providing "Direct Push" email abilities and new security features, according to CNET.

Microsoft also said several new phones will contain the necessary software for push email, including Hewlett-Packard's iPaq hw6900 Mobile Messenger, the Fujitsu Siemens FS Pocket Loox and the Gigabyte g-Smart, to be offered by Chungwa Telecom in Taiwan.