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Research: Key trends in mobile push email

• Tags:
• Rim,
• Wider,
• Rollout,
• Microsoft Exchange

Rhetorik

Published: 26 Jun 2007 16:50 BST

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Executive summary:

• Penetration of mobile email across UK organisations is high. Of all enterprises researched with some degree of mobility in the workforce, 84 percent were users of mobile email.
• Use of handheld email devices within the workforce itself was relatively low, however, with approaching half (44 percent) of these enterprises having a user base of less than 10 percent of staff.
• The predominant trend in usage is one of growth, with almost two-thirds of users reporting an increasing user-base, driven largely by increasing mobility and a strong business case for use.
• Push email is now the most prevalent implementation technology, with 50 percent higher penetration than pull email within our research sample. However, pull email has stronger acceptance within the smaller (small office, home office — SOHO) organisations.
• Key drivers in the use of push technology were: to enable staff to be constantly accessible and in touch with customers and suppliers; for users to be always in contact with the office; and to facilitate rapid and efficient communications.
• Key barriers to adoption of push email for non-users included a lack of perceived need or demand, cost issues and, in many cases, having not yet evaluated the technology. Of less significance were concerns about security, control and reliability. Barriers to wider adoption within the existing user-base were predominantly cost and security related, although lack of a perceived business need and concerns about increased pressures on staff were also important factors. When considering broadly the types of mobile push email in use, almost three-quarters reported using solutions based on the RIM (BlackBerry) protocol. Around half had Microsoft solutions and around one-third were using email based on POP3. Many enterprises had multiple solutions in use.
• The main push email clients in use were BlackBerry and Microsoft Direct Push. Almost three-quarters of users reported application of a BlackBerry client on a RIM handset, and a further quarter used BlackBerry on a non-RIM device.
• BlackBerry Enterprise Server for Microsoft Exchange was widely applied and a small proportion of Lotus Notes users had the version for IBM Lotus Domino. The other main push email server in use was Microsoft Direct Push — Microsoft Exchange 2003 and higher.
• Respondents saw clear benefits in use of push email devices to the organisations themselves and, to a slightly lesser extent, to key staff, but the desirability in use to the holders of these devices, although positive, was not quite as compelling.
• When asked about improvements to handheld push email devices, the wish list was diverse. However, a few important themes emerged. Faster download and upload speeds or data compression capabilities were requested by 15 percent of all respondents, with other common requirements including a reduction in costs (nine percent), better handling of attachments (seven percent), improved synchronisation (seven percent) and improved spam control and filtering (six percent).

Go to section: Introduction, scope and methodology Executive summary Use of mobile email Trends in use of mobile email Push or pull? Drivers and restraints of push technology Push email solutions and technology User perceptions User wish list

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