The mobile email addiction is spreading fast—Posted on August 31, 2007

So it’s official, following years of speculation about how addictive the BlackBerry really is, Gartner has released a research report predicting a meteoric rise in the use of mobile email. It forecasts that the popularity of text messaging is on the wane, as by 2010 over a fifth of email users will be sending messages wirelessly. Also that within three years wireless email users would have grown from 20million to 350million worldwide. That’s more than 320 million new users - more than the population of the USA!

What will this huge upsurge in mobile emailing mean? The short answer is that by 2010 people will think emailing while waiting for a flight is as normal as texting on a bus. This change in how people want to communicate is where SMBs will really notice the impact on their business.

As customers begin to email from wherever they are, whenever they want , they will expect a company they are doing business with to be doing the same. Not having a work force equipped to work on the move will mean that that employees will not be as responsive as your increasingly demanding customer base will expect. Your reputation as a company that rides with the times could be seriously tarnished.

Some SMBs will be concerned about the cost and hassle of implementing mobile email. But it can be easily enabled through 3G cards for laptops or handheld devices. SMBs should seriously consider if mobile email will help to improve staff efficiency and customer relationships. If so, adoption driven by company foresight, rather than a beleaguered response to unsatisfied customers, is surely a sound business strategy.