Mobile email company Pivotal Veracity has added the Palm Pre and Google's Android-based smartphones to its email design preview service, eDesign Optimizer.

Pivotal Veracity will also optimize campaigns for social networking giant MySpace?s new webmail platform. This expansion is evidence of the fact that smartphones are growing in importance.

?Our strategy is to help marketers optimize the deliverability, rendering and reputation of their communications across mobile, social, search and traditional Web and software-based email platforms,? said Deirdre Baird, president/CEO of Pivotal Veracity, Phoenix, AZ.

?One mega-trend we are seeing and reacting to with this new release is an explosion in consumer adoption of smartphones,? she said. 

The total number of smartphones sold in the United States skyrocketed by 72 percent year over year, according to recent research from the Nielsen Co., and these individuals already make up half of the entire mobile Web audience.

Meanwhile, the Radicati Group says that the mobile-phone email market will grow at an average annual rate of 68 percent over the next four years, totaling more than 1 billion mobile mailboxes by the end of 2013.

This will fundamentally change the consumer email experience.

?By adding new mobile platforms like Android and Palm Pre to our solutions, we're making sure that our clients remain ahead of the curve,? Ms. Baird said.

Pivotal Veracity already includes two generations of BlackBerry, Palm, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices in its email platform.

The day when more people read and respond to email via their handhelds than any other platform is approaching, underscoring how critical it to build email campaigns that are optimized for mobile devices.

Pivotal Veracity?s eDesign Optimizer is a suite of email design tools that enable marketers to verify that their links and images work, verify code and visually preserve branding and messaging integrity through an extensive range of mobile, desktop and webmail screenshots.

The service covers rendering on all major mobile devices, provides all views for supported  mobile devices and includes campaign previews for MySpace webmail.

?Android is going to be a major mobile email player, with Gartner recently issuing a study claiming that it is poised to take over iPhone sales by 2012,? Ms. Baird said. ?Palm Pre is also a very popular phone and boasts eye-pleasing rendering similar to the iPhone. 

?The bottom line is that all handhelds are growing in importance, and more and more consumers will be accessing marketers' email on the small screen while they're on the go, not just the big one while they're sitting at their desks,? she said.

?With eDesign Optimizer, marketers can ensure they design campaigns that are relevant and provide value for their customers who are accessing their email on their handhelds."