PocketMail was a small and inexpensive mobile computer, with a built in acoustic coupler.
Considered the first mass-market mobile email ever, the device was sold at around $100, with a monthly fee of $9.95 for unlimited use. PocketMail allowed users to send and receive emails, without the need for a computer.
After the company made a reference hardware design, leading consumer electronics manufacturers, like Audioxo, Sharp, JVC, and others started making their own PocketMail devices. PocketMail then introduced a dongle for users using PalmPilot.
Every owners of PocketMail were given their own custom email address, and were also able to sync their existing email accounts with PocketMail. As a small handheld computer, it was considered a low-cost personal digital assistant (PDA).
PocketMail existed in the era when wireless mobile data was extremely expensive or entirely unavailable, and high speed broadband was still a dream.
PocketMail is powered by two AA batteries, sports an EL backlight monochrome LCD, a rubberized QWERTY keyboard. The device came with a manual, guide, a CD-ROM, a RS-232 data link cable that uses a 2.5mm connector.
It could have been a smartphone maker, long before Google or Apple.
But since it only worked as a device for sending and receiving email, and requiring users to connect the device to a landline telephone, PocketMail only had around 32,000 users in the U.S..
The year 2000 was when PocketMail reached its peak popularity.
Later that year, things didn't look good for the company, as it was reporting a $14.5 million loss.
David Marchant, who was PocketMail's CEO at the time, said that the company needed to revise its business strategy to cope with "extremely tight" capital markets.
"Against this background, we have had to revise our business strategy to preserve cash and ensure that the business can survive in the absence of new capital," he said in a statement.
In 2011, it reported a $6.7 million loss, and by the first quarter of 2002, it was reporting a negative cashflow of $500,000, leaving the company with just $159,000 in cash reserves.
Most notably after 'smartphones' started to take over the market, making email more convenience, PocketMail experienced huge struggle that it was forced to stop creating new devices.
Then in 2007, PocketMail which was based in Australia, changed its name to Adavale Resources Limited, which focuses on uranium mining prospects, because as a matter of fact, the company did have some experience mining sector.
Before going into the business of selling hand-held email devices, PocketMail was known successively as Mining Corp of Australia, Target Mining and Asia Gold Mining..
In September 2009, the rebranded PocketMail Group acquired exploration projects in South Australia and Queensland.
In 2010. PocketMail's email service shut down altogether