December 13, 2005 100 Million Mobile E-Mail Users In Four Years, Exec Predicts By Elena Malykhina Courtesy of Just how big can mobile E-mail get? The BlackBerry may seem ubiquitous in certain circles, but there are only somewhere around 5 million mobile E-mail users of all stripes today. Imagine 20 times that many. "We think that 100 million users in four years, just in the enterprise market, is very achievable," said Dave Grannan, general manager of mobile E-mail at Nokia's Mobility Solutions division, speaking at Interop, a conference on technology convergence, in New York on Tuesday. Grannan said a variety of factors will drive that growth, including new mobile devices that will come standard with E-mail, such as devices coming from Nokia starting next year. Hovering over the discussion was the future of the BlackBerry service, since maker Research In Motion Ltd. faces a patent lawsuit by NTP Inc. that threatens to shut down the service in the United States. RIM has declined to discuss a report by The Wall Street Journal and others that NTP Inc. would settle its patent-infringement lawsuit against RIM for a payment equal to 5.7% of future revenue from BlackBerrys sold in the United States. But Dave Werezak, VP of RIM's enterprise business unit, said shutting down the BlackBerry service in the United States wouldn’t benefit NTP. "There's no advantage for anyone to turn the service off," Werezak said. If that 100 million figure is reality, and BlackBerry can keep running, it’s well positioned for growth. BlackBerry is one of the most popular devices for mobile E-mail, and about 60% of businesses running the BlackBerry Enterprise Server have started deploying other applications beyond E-mail, the company says. Shutting down RIM's BlackBerry service means hurting customers that are using or deploying BlackBerrys and RIM's mobile E-mail service, which is the driving force behind wireless deployments at many companies. Other panelists voiced the importance of the BlackBerry for business users. "RIM has done a great job in proving that there's real value in mobile E-mail," said Jeff Damir, VP of sales and business development at Seven Networks Inc., a provider of mobile E-mail software. The key to major growth of mobile E-mail is whether businesses start deploying devices like BlackBerrys to the rest of the workforce, beyond executives and road warriors. Said RIM's Werezak, "We see potential for people you wouldn't automatically think of getting these devices, like jobs in facilities and the IT staff that needs [the devices] to work through trouble tickets." E-mail This Story Print This Story Get the latest Messaging news, product info, and trends every week.			Spyware And Adware Continue To Plague PCs Social Networking Connects For Business Bluetooth's Mobile Handshake The Six Gotchas Of Skype For Business Analysis: Avaya's Peer-To-Peer Toothache BlackBerry Faces Challenges Beyond The NTP Lawsuit     Messaging Pipeline's Main RSS Feed     Messaging Pipeline's Blog RSS Feed Editorial and vendor perspectives The Six Flavors Of Windows Vista Microsoft plans to release a full six-pack of Vista versions, one for every taste. Which Vista will be right for you? Hope is Not Enough When It Comes To Compliance Three Ways To Authenticate E-Mail And Stop Spam Wikis In The Workplace Review: Google Desktop 3 Vendors are now talking about how collaboration can be improved by integrating video with messaging applications. They're even talking about adding live TV to mobile phones. How far do you go before it becomes a bandwidth and business productivity drain? Video is a great idea     13% Video is fine but there needs to be size limits     25% It's never used for anything really productive     38% I draw the line at live TV     25% In search of messaging products? Check out our brand new Product Finder for a directory of groupware and collaboration tools, security products, archiving solutions, and more.