By Staff Writer – John Federico (@gadgetboy)

There’s a battle going on right under your nose and you probably don’t even realize it’s happening. It’s an extremely competitive, economic fight to the death and it’s specifically happening in your inbox on your iPhone.

It’s The Battle of the GMail Push Notifiers.

You might think that a battle of this nature is trivial, but people who spend the majority of their day in their inboxes take it very seriously – and they’re not happy.

First of all, they’re angry with Apple. Why Apple?

Because the IMAP mail protocol supports a setting called IDLE mode that delivers push email, similar to what one might experience using a BlackBerry or Microsoft Exchange Activesync. Apple chose to support IMAP, but left IDLE support out of it. Why?

MobileMe.

When the iPhone launched, Apple’s MobileMe service was the only consumer service to support push email and Apple wanted your annual subscription of $99. (Fine, but the least they could do is make it reliable. Apple has a history of not getting web services right. Yet.) With the update to iPhone OS 2.0, Apple realized that they had to provide access to corporate email services and added Microsoft Activesync support, including push email. But that was for corporate users. What did consumers do for push email? They used MobileMe or they were out of luck.

Enter the Apple Push Notification Service.

For those of you who never actually use your iPhone – or possibly haven’t heard the masses complaining – the iPhone is, shall we say, a bit challenged in the battery department. It sucks. I mean, it sucks your battery dry in less than a day – or sooner if you’re in an area with poor network coverage. With that in mind, Apple wouldn’t – couldn’t – allow any third-party applications to run in the background, waiting for notifications from web services. It would probably turn the iPhone into a paperweight in about an hour. So they created the Apple Push Notification Service. This service enables Apple to maintain a persistent IP connection to your iPhone, then allows third-party developers to use that connection to send notifications to you.

This method reduces the drain on the battery and creates a more consistent user experience. They shipped it a year late, but it’s here now and it works.

So now, the millions of GMail users can have something like push email. They can be notified when a new message arrives in their inbox through a simple text-based message and have that notification play a sound, pop-up an overlay window or change the badge on the application. But they need an app to do it for them. And there are many, making the marketplace for these apps a morass of approaches and confusion.

First, there’s the “to forward or not to forward” debate. Many of these app developers have chosen not to have a server that monitors your GMail inbox for new mail and instead have opted for the (possibly) less resource-intensive practice of having you forward your mail to a special email address on the developer’s server. Is it faster this way? Slower? Less complex for the app developer but more complex for the customer? The debate rages on.

Next is the “one-time fee vs. subscription” debate. Other than free (of course), 99 cents seems to be the price point that most consumers prefer. This is a huge debate among all developers, but it’s a tricky value proposition for this particular class of app. Unlike, say, a game that is mostly self-contained and may have limited use of the network, apps like these are all about the network and the servers that support the desired functions – and maintaining those network services costs real money.

Some developers have begun to charge a subscription fee for GMail notifiers using the in-app purchasing engine that Apple provided in version 3.0 of the iPhone OS. Some charge 99 cents for the app, then charge an incremental subscription fee while other developers give away the app and upsell subscriptions or features. Still, others charge a flat fee of 99 cents or $1.99 without an ogoing subscription fee.

As much I hate paying yet another monthly recurring fee, the one-time purchase model is a Ponzi Scheme. Think about it: a developer will invest in hosting a Push Notification Server somewhere which requires an upfront investment, then begins selling their app for a one-time fee. The only way that developer can continue to offer the service is if people continue to purchase the app. Once people stop buying the app, the revenue stream dries up and when that happens, so does the service. These developers could charge for upgrades to the application, but this practice makes consumers feel cranky. (“What?! You want me to pay you for the work you do!?”)

At least with a subscription model you’re feeding the proverbial beast and keeping the service running without concern for constant application sales. Of course, with apps being only a few dollars at most, switching costs are low. When one push developer goes belly up, you can always switch to another one-time fee app. (If there are any left, at that point.) It’s truly ruthless.

What combination of business model, price point and features will win? It may actually be Google. While this kerfuffle between Apple, developers and consumers raged on, Google licensed the Exchange Activiesync protocol from Microsoft and quietly began offering push GMail service to iPhones using the popular corporate mail interface and like most things Google-fied, it’s free. That said, true push email – when all your messages in their entirety are pushed to your iPhone – sucks up battery power quickly. This fact has convinced many folks (yours truly included) to continue using a GMail notifier.

Who will be the last one standing? (Well, aside from Google.) The app developer with the best cash position. Only a pile of cash will enable them to ride out the wave of fickle, demanding consumers.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Tags: Activesync , Apple , BlackBerry , GMail , Google , IMAP , iPhone , Microsoft , Microsoft Exchange , MobileMe , Ponzi Scheme , Push Email