The push to implement unified wireless messaging services into wireless providers’ portfolios of services and enterprise customers is growing stronger as both messaging providers and wireless operators look to capitalize on a market ready to explode.
Wireless research firm ARC Group predicts unified wireless messaging will cover 65 percent of wireless subscribers by 2004. Another report, by Gartner Group’s Dataquest, expects 1.4 million wireless messaging users by the end of the year, with 15.6 million users by the end of 2004.
“Workforce mobility, Web access and handheld devices have driven the need for a single, synchronized message store that can be tapped into over various protocols from anywhere on the planet,” said David Ferris, president of San Francisco-based market research firm Ferris Research. “Messaging is critical to conducting business in the new global economy, and fast access to those messages is crucial.”
A study by Phillips-InfoTech, a Parsippany, N.J.-based global research and consulting firm, found that two major factors restrained demand for messaging services in the past-the cost and the complexity of solution implementation.
“However, as vendors and service providers aggressively address these concerns in the marketplace, the unified messaging market will experience phenomenal growth,” the study noted.
To address those concerns, wireless messaging providers, including Mirapoint Inc., Commtouch Inc. and Centrinity Inc., are focusing on providing services that integrate easily into existing legacy systems. This not only allows wireless service providers and enterprise customers to keep current messaging systems, but controls costs.
“To successfully launch unified-messaging services, it is best to build around voice and e-mail services that already exist,” explained Scott Slater, vice president of corporate development for Commtouch.
In addition, wireless messaging solution providers are offering access to voice mail, e-mail and fax messages through wired or wireless connections. To further ease use, voice to text capabilities are also being introduced by some providers.
“In the past there were not standards in place allowing the implementation of wireless messaging services,” said Cynthia Hswe, an analyst at The Strategis Group. “Now, much of the technology is network and device agnostic, allowing implementation with proper middleware software.”
While offering these new services to enterprise customers and wireless carriers is the goal of outsource messaging providers, most know that the key for integration of their services is keeping them simple.
“If you don’t make the messaging solutions simple, it does not get used,” Slater. “No matter how attractive a service offering is, if the end user does not understand it, they will not use it.”
Even with the industry push to implement wireless messaging, consumer uptake may be slow. Critics argue that consumers may find wireless messaging services too complicated and time consuming when compared to messaging services now available on their home computers.
The Yankee Group also noted that only about 25 percent of U.S. teenagers, a large potential market for messaging services, currently use mobile devices, compared to 80 percent in some countries in Europe.
“The U.S. market in comparison with Europe and Japan is in a word, complex,” explained Slater. “In Europe, messaging services are all short messaging service. In Japan, they have a different concept of the Internet and e-mail, as most only have access to the Internet through wireless devices. To them, e-mail is wireless messaging.”
Slater noted that the additional complexity of the U.S. market, due to the numerous choices of messaging options, could create uncertainty in the market and slow growth.
Even acknowledging the potential of slow growth in the unified wireless messaging industry, Slater noted Commtouch was adding more than 75,000 users per day to its service.
