82% Of Survey Respondents Want Mobile Email

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&amp;newsId=20050815005376&amp;newsLang=en">http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&amp;newsId=20050815005376&amp;newsLang=en</a><br /><br /><i>"Results released today point to a significant market opportunity for consumer mobile email. However, unlike users of corporate wireless email solutions, consumers overwhelmingly want to be able to control who they receive emails from on their cell phone and cite "low cost" as a very important mobile email feature. The online poll of adult consumers in the United States was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs on behalf of Critical Path, Inc."</i><br /><br />I suspected a lot of consumers would benefit from mobile email, but I never imagined over 80% would want it. The key to this working though is people probably want mobile access to <i>their</i> email rather than setting up another email address that is tied to a particular provider. Sometimes getting access, other than via a web page, to email through your ISP can be difficult if not impossible when you are not on their network, which would be the case when traveling. Others are tied to their Hotmail or Yahoo accounts and getting mobile access those can be costly, at least compared to the "free" that many are used to.

[PPCRules]

... Others are tied to their Hotmail or Yahoo accounts and getting mobile access those can be costly, at least compared to the "free" that many are used to.
I send free text message alerts to my phone from a Hotmail acount (all messages (not spammed yet)) and a Yahoo account (certain senders) (not available with GMail yet). Very handy. When I am expecting something, especially, it gives me all the info I need. And I can certainly reply via SMS email, if necessary.

I suspect that this would satisfy many users desire for mobile email access, especially if they factor in cost. If I'd been polled, I would have said 'yes', but I don't need the type of service that you have in mind.

[sudermatt]

T-Mobile has the best solution I've seen. You set up multiple email accounts in their system, they check the accounts and send you an SMS when you get a new email....then you can use the client on the device to go get it. I wish Verizon did this. I think this is truly the best solution.

Matt

[Jon Westfall]

Whoa, I'm shocked - you mean 80% of consumers chose Email over interchangeable faceplates or ringtones? :roll:

[Rob Alexander]

It's not really a surprising number when you consider the lack of investment in the answer. If you walked out on the street and said "hey, wouldn't it be cool to have email right there on your cell phone?", I'm sure about 82% would say, "sure."

That's about all that figure means. You get more insight when you read the other statistics. One that is particularly telling is that more than half of the respondents don't know whether or not their current phone can do email. So, sure, it would be nice, but no, it's not worth the trouble of making a single phone call to ask whether I can already do it.

The price issue was also significant. People aren't willing to pay very much at all for it. So what you really have is that 82% of the respondents would like email on their phones so long as it takes not one minute of time to figure out and doesn't cost much, if anything. It doesn't look to me like a market ready to explode.

[MitchellO]

I would definately be in the yes category. I find my PPC Phone to be invaluable for checking up on the eBay auction I have bid on, or an item I'm selling, for reading PPCT and The Gadgeteer live, checking email (particularly for my video editing/CD DVD Duplication jobs) and MSN Messenger (Which is HEAPS cheaper than SMS).

I am about to go away to Perth for a couple of days, and I won't need to take my laptop to email people who have bought my items off eBay, or to respond to friends on MSN. Not to mention read PPCT :D .....

[MitchellO]

And I wanted to say how neat the mobile forum is!! I can now surf the PPCT forum on my XDA Mini via GPRS without it costing an arm and a leg. I wish NotebookForums had a mobile version. I am very active over there, and being able to post from my PDA would be great!