European businesses embrace mobile email

 

Gallery

By Maggie Holland

Posted on 17 Dec 2007 at 11:56

Wireless email is becoming a "must have" application for European businesses, according to analysts.

According to market research firm Frost & Sullivan, mobile email is moving away from a luxury to a necessity for business users, with the segment expected to be worth around £4.7 billion in 2012.

"The business case justifying the benefits of mobile connectivity is well understood and appreciated," says Shomik Banerjee, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan.

"Mobile connectivity not only improves flexibility, but also allows faster decision making and increases efficiency by utilising otherwise wasted time. Overall, it improves the effectiveness of the user to the business."

While many European mobile players have complemented their own push email services with third-party solutions including products from BlackBerry and Microsoft, the analysis firm claims limited interoperability is hindering future market development.

"The lack of initiative from the mobile industry to implement P-IMAP (push extension to IMAP - one of the largely successful e-mail technologies) developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is surprising," adds Banerjee.