Air2Web will launch an updated version of its instant-messaging offering this week, targeting on-the-go workers who use desktop clients like IBM’s Lotus Sametime, Microsoft LCS and Jabber.
The new product builds on Air2Web’s 18-month-old 2IM, which seeks to extend enterprise-targeted desktop IM applications onto mobile devices. It supports consumer IM services as well as enterprise software and can be used on smart phones and J2ME-enabled handsets. A BREW-enabled version is due in coming weeks.
“We saw a real need for a mobile IM solution which would give users a device choice,” said Sanjoy Malik, president and chief executive officer of Air2Web. “With 2IM, the corporate user and IT departments have the flexibility to select the device which best suits their communications needs.”
The move is the latest in a small but growing effort to provide IM to mobile workers. In a series of announcements last month, Research in Motion Ltd. said it is working with IBM, Novell and Microsoft to bring IM capabilities to RIM’s BlackBerry.
“Enterprise instant messaging is an important application for our customers, and wireless instant messaging will be a very complementary addition to the existing suite of productivity applications available to BlackBerry users,” Mike Lazaridis, president and co-chief executive officer of RIM, said at the time.
There’s no denying the popularity of consumer IM services like AOL, MSN and Yahoo!, both at home and at work. A study released last year by Pew Internet & American Life indicated 65 million teens and adults use IM services in the United States, and that number is expected to increase substantially during the next several years.
“IM use is growing,” noted Nate Root, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. “Somewhere between 50 percent and 80 percent of North American workers are using IM in the office.”
It’s unclear how those workers are using IM though. Forrester Research studies indicate nearly two-thirds of those using IM in the work place are using unsanctioned applications, often logging onto consumer-targeted services to chat with friends.
IM proponents point to several attractive features including “presence,” which allows users to indicate to others whether they’re available, in meetings or away from their devices. And unlike e-mail, IM-which some describe as a text version of push-to-talk-can provide a conversation-like dialogue between two users or a group of buddies. Also, Air2Web’s offering allows users to keep more than one chat window open at a time.
Mobile IM seems to be gaining traction slowly among mobile consumers, with more than 8 percent of wireless subscribers using at least one instant-messaging service on their handsets, according to M:Metrics, a Seattle-based mobile content and application measurement firm.
Whether business could duplicate even that modest uptake remains to be seen.
“If you look at the demographic segment relative to its size in the market, you have a much higher propensity to use mobile IM if you’re younger,” said Mark Donovan, M:Metrics’ senior analyst and vice president.
While such usage trends may not bode well for the immediate future of commercial mobile IM use, the market for such applications eventually could be a substantial one, Donovan said.
“This is yet another example of how we’re trending in the business world to this always-on presence,” he said. “When we see lots of activity around new technologies, it’s based upon a belief that directionally that’s where the market is headed.” RCR
