Research firm Gartner predicts that worldwide wireless email users will reach 1 billion by 2014 with the year 2010 set to witness an estimated 80 million business wireless e-mail accounts that include large, midsize and small organizations as well as individual professionals totaling about 60 million.

"Productivity gains with wireless e-mail are driving adoption beyond executives," said Monica Basso, research vice president at Gartner. "In 2010, enterprise wireless e-mail is still a priority for organizations, whose mobile workforces are up to 40 percent of the total employee base. Most midsize and large organizations in North America and Europe have deployed enterprise wireless e-mail already, but on average, for less than 5 percent of the workforce."

According to Gartner, with wireless email beginning to integrate with social networking and collaboration, social networking is increasingly complementing e-mail for interpersonal business communications. Gartner predicts that by 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.

"People increasingly want to use mobile devices for collaboration to share content, information, and experiences with their communities," Ms. Basso said. "Social paradigms are converging with e-mail, instant messaging, voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and presence, creating new collaboration styles."

"Thanks to ease of access, the cloud will generate indirect competition in the wireless e-mail software market and will transform it in the long term," Ms. Basso said. "Cloud e-mail offerings from software and service players, such as Google's Gmail, will begin to be adopted, pulling wireless e-mail implementations into the cloud as well. Research In Motion and other wireless e-mail vendors will build partnerships with cloud providers to address their customers' cloud strategies. Through 2012, wireless e-mail products and services will be interchangeable, shipping in large volumes at reduced prices. Wireless e-mail will be highly commoditized and on any device. This commoditization will, in turn, drive standardization and price reductions on service bundles from mobile carriers."