Wireless email use has been tipped to grow a staggering 12 times in 2010, from an estimate 80 million users worldwide to some one billion by the end of the year, according to Gartner.
Research vice president at Gartner, Monica Basso, said the adoption of wireless email technology – which allows an individual's email account to be accessible and usable via mobile networks on mobile devices –is being driven significantly by productivity gains amongst executives.
"In 2010, enterprise wireless email is still a priority for organisations, whose mobile workforces are up to 40 per cent of the total employee base," Basso said in a statement. "Most midsize and large organisations in North America and Europe have deployed enterprise wireless email already, but on average, for less than five per cent of the workforce.”
Gartner’s research also confirmed the integration of social networking and collaboration with wireless email, as well as social networking platforms becoming increasing complementary to interpersonal email exchange among business communications.
The analyst house also predicts social networking services to replace email as the main vehicle for interpersonal communication for 20 per cent of users by 2014.
"People increasingly want to use mobile devices for collaboration to share content, information, and experiences with their communities," Basso said. "Social paradigms are converging with email, instant messaging, voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and presence, creating new collaboration styles."
In response to this growth, Gartner has also predicted vendors including, Microsoft, IBM and Google – which are in the early stages of implementing cloud email services – to increase their services significantly over the next five years, expecting the number of email accounts in the cloud to go from three per cent in 2009, to 10 per cent in 2014.
"Cloud email offerings from software and service players, such as Google's Gmail, will begin to be adopted, pulling wireless email implementations into the cloud as well," Basso said."Research In Motion and other wireless email vendors will build partnerships with cloud providers to address their customers' cloud strategies.
"Through 2012, wireless email products and services will be interchangeable, shipping in large volumes at reduced prices. Wireless email will be highly commoditised and on any device. This commoditisation will, in turn, drive standardisation and price reductions on service bundles from mobile carriers."
As previously reported by Computerowlrd Australia, businesses have already started integrated social media platforms into their workplace, including not-for-profit organisation, Alpha Autism, and its introduction of Salesforce’s Chatter.