Editor's Pick White Paper:
Free For All: The Untapped Opportunity for Mass Market Mobile Email

- Written by MSearch Groove & Sponsored by Funambol

1. On Mobile Phones, Communications is the "Killer App"

The mobile industry may like to believe that users are willing to settle for a confusing array of fragmented services across a wide range of devices. In reality, many users are starting to expect an experience on their mobiles that is similar to desktop and Web applications.

On the move, in the office, and at home, they want it all. Put simply, users want text messaging, instant messaging, and a slew of so-called mobile 2.0 messaging services. They want them on their terms and without thinking about the underlying technology or if they are using a PC, a browser, or a mobile phone.

Against this backdrop, demand for communication services that bridge the boundaries of desktops and mobiles is poised for explosive growth. Top of the checklist for many people is email, a service that has become an integral part of their lives but so far has been limited to the desktop except for a small minority of users.

The Radicati Group, a tech market research firm, counts two billion active email accounts worldwide. Yet despite all these accounts, less than two percent of the 3.3 billion mobile user in the world receive email on their phones today. User demand is certainly not the bottleneck. To the contrary, Frost & Sullivan, a research and consulting company, forecasts that global mobile email usage will increase 24 percent annually over the next four years.

1.1 Pent-up demand

Clearly, mobile email is moving up the priority list of many mobile users. So why is there a disconnect between the number of people who want mobile email and those who get it? A recent online survey of 500 users sheds some light on this. It reveals that a whopping 67 percent of users would like email on their mobile phones. However, some 45 percent of respondents said they are put off by high cost, and another 30 percent complained that it was too complex.

Put simply, so far mobile email has not been accessible for the average user. Other barriers to adoption include:

• Limited device support: Mobile email has worked well primarily on specialized devices and smartphones – devices of choice for enterprise users but owned by only a small fraction of others.
  
• Usability: Consumer handsets have been difficult to configure and use for email.
  
• Cost: On the desktop, email is free. Studies show that mass market users expect the same when it comes to mobile email.

Fortunately, several trends play in favor of increased mobile email adoption. Chief among these is the move by mobile operators – such as Vodafone in Europe – to introduce affordable "all you can eat" fixed rate data plans. These are whetting the appetite of users for a wide range of mobile services, including mobile email.

Another trend is the decision by device manufacturers to introduce more sophisticated devices at lower prices – such as the new iPhone, and consumer-oriented BlackBerries – that combine large screens, qwerty keyboards, more processing power, faster connectivity, and memory, to deliver an end-user email experience approaching that of a PC.

In summary: Mobile phones increasingly are becoming the "new computer" for many people. Reduced mobile data tariffs encourage users to access mobile services such as email on the fly. The opportunity is ripe to provide mobile email to a mass market audience.

2. Pump Up The Volume

The good news, according to Frost & Sullivan, is that mobile operators and service providers have an opportunity to turn mobile email for the mass market – consumers, prosumers, and small and medium business users – into their next big cash cow. The better news is that the market for mobile email is a huge growth area without a clear leader.

Sensing how important mobile is to their futures, online giants such as Google and Yahoo! are scrambling to offer users mobile email. These companies have a competitive agenda that is impossible to ignore yet difficult to discern.

In the short-term, the impact of their offerings may appear harmless enough. But be assured the impact can be profound as users learn to associate their brands with a broad range of personalized mobile services.

Case in point is Yahoo!, who offers Yahoo! Go and well as onePlace. onePlace is a content solution, announced in March, 2008, that is designed to dovetail with the company's other mobile offerings including oneConnect, a tool to update social networking and messaging on one mobile platform; and OneSearch, which aggregates news, weather, financial data, photos, and Web links based on search queries. onePlace will "put everything in which a consumer is interested into a single location and then serve it up in the most personally-relevant manner," Yahoo! said in a press release.

If mobile operators and service providers are not careful, mass market users will come to view mobile services such as Go and onePlace as the jumping off points for all mobile content and communication. Should this happen, the role of the operator will be relegated to that of dumb pipe. This scenario is hardly far-fetched. Carriers and Internet service providers lost their clout to Web rivals in the early days of the Internet, and they risk this occurring again if they don't act fast.

However, there is still ample time and room for many in the mobile value chain to compete and win against the Internet giants if they can deliver an engaging mobile email service for the mass market at an attractive price.