According to Gartner, by 2010, 20% of all email accounts will be mobile. Unfortunately the findings do not point to the type of activities (sending, receiving, opening attachments such as multimedia) that consumers will engage in, but it does predict that mobile email will take share away from SMS. Does this mean email is not for old people after all? :)
What does this mean for marketers?
For one thing, it may behoove you to start to get into the habit of checking your email newsletters on various handsets. For me, the main place I read email newsletters is on the go. While everything looks good on an iPhone, this was not the case with my Blackberry Curve.
Here is another interesting sound bite from this report:
"Convergence will happen on the client side, hiding technology complexity from users and allowing them to focus on messaging content. By 2017, wireless email will be fully integrated with other messaging tools into personal, converged communications," added Basso.
I fully agree with this statement. The mobile phone will become eventually become a true palmtop computer (much like my iPhone) and users will increasingly find little differentiation in the common tasks they do from device to device.
As for content, I still believe content consumption will always be a different story on the palmtop computer. Place and time will always play a factor.
Tags: Gartner, SMS, Mobile, MMS, iPhone, Convergence, Palmtop, Marketing, Blackberry, Curve