Look for consumer-mail to take over

A recent white paper from analysts Frost & Sullivan predicts that mobile email will begin growing by an estimated 24% per year beginning in 2007. Mobile email revenue is expected to grow to just over $16 billion during the same four year time period.

by Kristina Knight

J. Gerry Purdy, Frost & Sullivan Vice President and Chief Analyst said, "Consumer email will join enterprise email as standard on mobile devices in the coming years. Mobile email that leverages open source and standards has the best chance for rapid adoption."

Mobile Instant Messaging (MIM) will show the largest growth at an expected 65% growth rate ($15 billion revenue). However, stand-bys SMS and MMS messages will only grow at an expected 1% rate during the next four years.

By 2010, SMS messaging is expected to bring in about $47 billion in revenue while MMS messaging is expected to bring in about $23 billion.

The report encourages marketers to get involved with mobile marketing now while the platform is fairly new. By becoming familiar with how mobile works while a relatively small number of users are "online", advertisers can work out the kinks in their own campaigns with smaller risk. And with more mobile users logging on daily, have a better chance of reaching the right consumer with the right message and at the right time as the platform becomes more mainstream and the revenue numbers begin to skyrocket.