Study Shows Strong Wireless E-Mail Growth

The Radicati Group's latest research study shows considerable growth in the wireless e-mail market during the past year, and predicts even further growth in the years to come. Their analysis shows that the growth is due to a shift in strategy by wireless service vendors such moving their marketing focus from selling directly to enterprise customers to selling to wireless carriers.

"By leveraging the size, market reach and visibility of wireless carriers particularly in North America and some parts of Western Europe," says the Palo Alto, Calif company's report, "many wireless e-mail vendors have been able to get their products more easily into the enterprise in conjunction with handheld devices." Those devices are of course marketed by the carriers.

The growing population of mobile professionals is the primary target for wireless e-mail services. Radicati defines them as people who spend at least one third of their time away from their offices on business. That group makes up 17% of the worldwide population of corporate professionals, and the report makes the rather dramatic prediction that mobile professionals will make up 89% of corporate professionals by the end of 2008.

Even a lesser growth in that population will push the market for wireless e-mail, and the growth will be further pushed by the amount of time that wireless e-mail allows employees to spend on work while not at their desk. The research suggests that professionals using wireless e-mail now put in an extra 60 minutes per day, and forecasts that number to grow to 95 minutes per day by the end of 2008.

When asked where the extra 35 minutes were going to come from, Sara Radicati said, "It's not how I'm planning to live my life, but a lot of people around here are doing things this way." She also said that the prediction in the study is based on a pure extrapolation of the trend since the advent of wireless e-mail.Radicati defines two types of enterprise wireless e-mail solutions:

Both of these solutions often support other applications, especially contact information and calendaring, although e-mail is the driving application. Both types also usually involve synchronization of both e-mail and the other applications with the desktop environment.

For more information, and to obtain the full study, visit www.radicati.com.