Wireless Email
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Wireless Email or Push Email for enterprises is an email solution for small handheld platforms that is secure and managed centrally by enterprise server. Wireless technology adoption has seen a dramatic increase over the past few years. Enhanced security being one of the reasons for this rapid embracement of wireless email among enterprises. Significant productivity gains, improvement in response durations and freedom of mobility were the top drivers for wireless enterprise email investments. Worldwide estimated number of wireless enterprise email users continue to grow at around 40 million currently with projected number of users to grow to approximately 130 million in 2010. Recent spate of mergers and acquisitions have seen a market shift in the strategy of device vendors wanting to integrate enterprise email applications packaged with enterprise ready devices. Smart phones constitute bulk of enterprise wireless devices. Smartphone segment has seen the most rapid year on year growth of more than 45% approximately according to industry estimates. This overall shift in the market is a strategic move towards strengthening enterprise specific handsets and one stop offering for all enterprise needs. As the Enterprise market for wireless email matures, demand for feature rich email clients with superior features will determine market leadership in this segment. Other Market forces and trends in the wireless segment such as rapid deployment of 3G networks, advances in graphic rich technology, input methods would indirectly touch the segment of wireless enterprise email. We examine the current technology, most popular feature set driving adoption of enterprises with an eye on the future trends and high level requirements that might strengthen tomorrows value proposition for Enterprise users.
[edit] Roadmap for Enterprise Mobile Wireless Email and Beyond
Strategic roadmap for wireless applications are dependent on several factors that include underlying availability of network bandwidth, handset technology, processor speeds, battery life and display technology. We look at some of the above factors to determine emerging industry trends. Wireless technology has come a long way since AMPS networks. Bandwidth has ever since increased with rampant breakthrough’s in modulation and handset designs. Trends indicate bandwidth increase from existing 64kbit/s GPRS speeds to over 2 Mbit/s for LTE networks. As bandwidth increases, quality of service issues become less of an issue in enabling multimedia applications without much degradation of services.
[edit] Handset Design
Handset design has undergone a tremendous change with never before integration of useful subcomponents such as camera, video capability, mp3 players, FM radio, bluetooth technology, touch interfaces, Qwerty keyboards, graphic rich user interfaces, jog dials, pointers etc all into one device. Selective components into specialized handsets has led to creation of smart phones which integrate the functionality of a PDA and a cellular mobile phone device. Smart phone devices have seen tremendous success with Enterprise users. Technological breakthrough’s in Organic LEDs, Innovative Visual foldable screens are on the road to market creating flexible long lasting mobile handsets. Convergence of broadband wireless, innovations in user friendly handset designs, security enhancements would lead to emergence of multimedia rich applications that include real time communication applications such as instant messaging, VoIP over wireless, Mobile Video Conferencing and other collaborative applications. We look at the smart phone segment as it constitutes the chunk of enterprise wireless mobile devices.
[edit] Future Steps
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- Secure Wireless Enterprise Email
- Secure Instant Messaging
- Voice Over IP Enterprise Grade
- Mobile Video Conferencing Enterprise Class (Secure)
- Unified Mobile Communication
Key enterprise drivers of improved productivity, reduction of response durations and increased collaboration along with mobility has been the main reason for the emergence of wireless enterprise market. Trends indicate enterprise ready secure instant messaging applications to be available by end of 2007 and significant adoption by 2008. With ubiquitous wireless broadband network availability and advances in handset CPU speed, battery life trends indicate the next killer application for enterprise mobile segment to be video conferencing applications. Most standards necessary for such an application are already in place like the DVB-H standards along with emergence of packet voice over wireless. The indicated roadmap is an approximate timeline.
