Mobile messaging will complement email

By Reva McEachern

February 1, 2008

Time for a new business model for mobile messaging?

It is undisputed now that mobile phones are nearly ubiquitous, offering marketers a highly personalized platform for targeting consumers through mobile messaging.

Market researcher JupiterResearch has forecast that advertisers will spend $2.9 billion by 2011 on mobile messaging and display ads.

"Instant messaging is taking root in a big way," said Senthil Krishnapillai, director of product management at Sybase iAnywhere.

Three out of four organizations have already established a corporate standard for mobile messaging devices. Although most organizations today have not taken significant steps toward integrating presence with mobile messaging platforms and applications, nearly two-thirds will want mobile messaging to be presence-enabled at some point.

"It is complementing the email solution," Mr. Krishnapillai said. "People are jumping between instant messaging and email."

Senthil Krishnapilla, director of product management for Sybase iAnywhere

JupiterResearch data shows that one out of five employees is expected by their employers to be reachable on a personal mobile device. Sometime this year, however, nearly one out of four employees will need to be reachable via their personal mobile device.

The vast majority of organizational decision makers believe that mobile messaging can significantly improve users' productivity. About two-thirds of companies take the view that ensuring employees use mobile devices properly is a serious or very serious problem, per JupiterResearch.

As more companies are providing these mobile tools, the issue becomes how to protect the information, Mr. Krishnapillai said.

According to JupiterResearch, almost as serious a problem are accessing corporate data repositories from a mobile device and data loss resulting from employees losing mobile devices.

A significant proportion of organizations view protection against liability in the event of the loss of a mobile device, as well as reporting and analysis capabilities, to be a difficult problem.

JupiterResearch estimates that BlackBerry devices and the growing variety of Windows Mobile devices are the most desired of the mobile messaging platforms in the workplace.

The majority of organizations currently support BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices and will continue to do so into 2008, the firm claims.

While BlackBerry support will continue to dominate organizations' support plans for the next several years, support for Windows Mobile devices will increase significantly as well.

"This is the year when you have multiple ways of communicating with your colleagues through the mobile device," Mr. Krishnapillai said. "We will see more trends where all of these communications need to be working together."